Interview with Elizabeth Norton and Valerie Schutte on Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves

In this episode, host Ellie Woodacre interviews Elizabeth Norton and Valerie Schutte about their new books for the Lives of Royal Women series on Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves. We discuss the surprising facts they encountered in their research which gave them new perspectives on these queens and the myths and tropes about their lives that they want to change.

If you are in the UK and a member of Historic Royal Palaces, you can catch both authors discussing their new books at Hampton Court Palace on 12 October 2026. Click here for more information and details.

Guest Bios:

Elizabeth Norton is an historian, focusing on queenship and the Tudor period. She has degrees from the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford and a PhD from King's College London, where she has also taught. Jane Seymour: Patronage, Material Culture and Image Crafting is her first monograph, while she has also published a number of peer reviewed articles. She is interested in public history and is the author of Women Who Ruled the World: 5000 Years of Female Monarchy (Footnote, 2025) and Lives of Tudor Women (Head of Zeus, 2016). She is active on social media as @ENortonHistory

Valerie Schutte is a historian of Tudor England, with a particular focus on royal women and book history. She has published three monographs: Mary I and the Art of Book Dedications: Royal Women, Power, and Persuasion (2015); Princesses Mary and Elizabeth Tudor and the Gift Book Exchange (2021); and Anne of Cleves: The Historical and Cultural Legacy of a Queen, which was just published with Routledge in July 2026. She has edited or co-edited seven volumes on Mary I, Shakespeare, and queenship. She consulted on the recent Six Lives exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Valerie is currently editing volumes on Tudor myths, Mary I and humanism, adaptations of the Tudors, and the Tudors represented in public and heritage sites. She is currently working on a monograph on books and manuscripts related to Queen Mary I’s 1554-1555 pregnancy. Recent publications include “A 1555 German Gift Book for Queen Mary I,” Journal of the Early Book Society, vol. 28 (2025), 63-81 and The Tudors, Myth, and Memory: Embroidered Truths, Outright Falsehoods, and Popular Belief (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026). She is active on Instagram / X as @Tudorqueenship.