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Thomas Wyatt, 1503 to 1542, has been called the greatest poet of his age, and he brought the poetry of the Italian Renaissance into the english Tudor world, especially the sonnet.
He was an ambassador for Henry VIII when being close to the king was the best protection and also the greatest danger, especially as Wyatt was allegedly too close to Anne Boleyn.
And some of his poems, such as they flee from me that sometime did me seek, are astonishingly fresh, conversational and intimate.
500 years after he wrote them with me to discuss Thomas Wyatt, ambassador and poet Brian Cummings 50th anniversary professor of English at the University of York, Susan Brigden, retired fellow at Lincoln College, University of Oxford, and Laura Ashe, professor of english literature at the University of Oxford.
Laura, what was Thomas Wyatt's background and what was his route to the tudor court?
Well, Thomas's father, Henry Wyatt, was from Yorkshire originally and from quite humble beginnings, it seems.
But he cannily backed the right horse during the wars of the Roses in that he supported Henry Tudor and was imprisoned by Richard III as a result, apparently.
And Wyatt later wrote in a letter to his son that he had been tortured under imprisonment.
And there was also a family legend, in fact, that during this harsh imprisonment he'd been lacking food and had befriended a cat who had brought him pigeons to eat.
But this kind of family legend certainly grew up.
Certainly he was a huge supporter of Henry Tudor, who became Henry VII, and he was well rewarded for it.
He became a privy councillor and ultimately was an executor of the will of the king and was one of the counselors in charge of advising the young king when Henry VIII came to the throne.
So then his son, Thomas Wyatt, was in line to inherit some of his duties and duly did so.
And so Thomas became.
He was given various smaller offices at court from 1516 onwards.