24 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture Taught by Dale Hoak College of William and Mary Ph.D., University of Cambridge

Meet England's most famous monarch, who provokes questions such as: "What is greatness?" "How should we judge character?" "Who or what can be said to 'make' or cause history?" Henry VIII (r. 1509 - 47) ruled an island kingdom about the size of Pennsylvania inhabited by fewer than 3 million people nearly 500 years ago, and yet he remains instantly recognizable to this day, his barrel-chested and bejeweled figure immortalized by the brush of Hans Holbein the Younger. A Famous Face ... but Why? So what accounts for Henry's astonishingly familiar image? Is it because he employed a brilliant portraitist? Or is there more to the story? This king, as one of his recent biographers has noted, "changed the heart, mind, and face of Britain more than anything between the coming of the Normans and the coming of the factory," not least by giving Protestantism its powerful purchase in the English-speaking world. And given Britain's later significance in world history - made possible in part by Henry himself - he must be accounted a towering figure of history.