Hannah Gray finds out the reality can sometimes be more interesting than fiction.

"Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced beheaded survived," goes the popular rhyme about Henry VIII's wives.

Because of this dramatic domestic life, Henry is perhaps the most famous of all our historic monarchs. His life has been much written about and dramatised – but how much of it is fact?

When it comes to the recent TV series The Tudors, Don Chiswell says some liberties have been taken with history.

"It makes me laugh," he said. "I know the historian David Starkey has attacked it. The real history is so interesting, because they are larger than life personalities, and there's all the things that happened."

One of the problems Don has with the TV series is the chronology. At the time of his third marriage, to Jane Seymour, which is the point the latest series was approaching, Henry was in his late 40s – and yet in the programme he is a svelt, handsome young man.

The fact that he wasn't a hunky young thing is quite crucial to the course of history, according to Don.

"If Henry was still the young, fit, virile man he's shown to be, he wouldn't have had all the anxiety about having an heir," he said.

Henry VIII also had two sisters, yet in the programme they are condensed into just one.

Don said: "All this sort of thing just distorts history, it's not real. It's done for artistic effect. It's done for a TV audience, but I believe they must think people are stupid really. People can cope with the complexity that the King had two sisters."

Moving away from the story as told on TV, Peterborough has a number of links to the Tudors.

Katharine of Aragon (wife number one) is buried at the cathedral, and this fact probably helped save the building when elsewhere in the country abbeys or monasteries were being torn down.

But the actions of the Abbot of Peterborough, John Chambers, also contributed to this.

Don said: "He didn't resist at all, he said 'take the lot' and he became the first Bishop of Peterborough. He accepted the King as the supreme head of the church, and he was rewarded.

"Peterborough escaped what happened to a lot of monasteries and abbeys, which were basically stripped down, as it became a cathedral." Continues on next page