Few British monarchs loom as large in the public imagination as King Henry VIII. Best known for his six infamous marriages and his penchant for beheadings, the towering figure of the Tudor King continues to fascinate us more than 500 years later. But where does the dramatic fiction of film meet the historical fact? In a new episode of Not Just The Tudors… Lates, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb hosts a discussion that dissects how Henry VIII has been reimagined on screen, exploring what these portrayals get right, what they get wrong, and why he remains such a compelling, complicated character. Suzannah is joined by an expert panel featuring Tudor specialist Jessie Childs, historian Dr Joanne Paul, and historian and screenwriter Alex Von Tunzelmann. Together, they trace the evolution of Henry’s cinematic image – from jolly rogue to calculated monster. The King’s shifting image The panel examines how different eras have moulded the King to suit their own fascinations: The lovable rogue: The discussion begins with Charles Laughton’s Oscar-winning performance in ‘The Private Life of Henry VIII’ (1933). This landmark film broke box office records, and set the initial mould for how the 20th century would view the King, creating the persistent caricature of the gluttonous King gorging on feasts.  The film’s satirical element is also powerful; as Dr Joanne Paul states, “there is something inherently ridiculous about Henry VIII and there is something powerful about laughing at him.” However, the film also reveals a surprisingly vulnerable Henry – a man desperately searching for love – a narrative that reframes the entire Tudor story focusing on the King’s own disappointments rather than solely on Anne Boleyn which tended to become popular later in the 20th century.  Promotional still from the 1933 film ‘The Private Life of Henry VIII’ featuring Charles Laughton as King Henry VIII, and Elsa Lanchester as Anne of Cleves, on their wedding night.Image Credit: Public Domain The sinister seducer: Cinematic portrayals took a darker turn by the 1960’s with Richard Burton’s far more sinister Henry VIII in ‘Anne of the Thousand Days’ (1969). Made when film codes were loosening, this film is shocking in its sexual politics, presenting a menacing Henry who slaps Anne Boleyn. The panel argues over whether this dark portrayal is historically accurate or simply reflects the harsher edge of 1960s filmmaking. Whilst Alex dislikes the film, Joanne, however, appreciates that the film shifts the narrative, portraying Anne as resisting Henry’s advances, giving her a power beyond simple sexual manipulation. The Renaissance heartthrob: The modern era offered a complete reboot with Jonathan Rhys Meyers in ‘The Tudors’ (2007-2010). Once dubbed “soft porn disguised as history” by film critic Mark Lawson, this depiction of a youthful, impossibly handsome Henry captured a crucial, often-missed element: the King’s early charisma and fire. The panel discusses how Rhys Meyers successfully embodied the beguiling and magnetic young Henry described in historical sources. Portrait of Henry VIII (1491-1547) byHans Holbein the Younger in 1540Image Credit: Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica / Public Domain Behind the persona: vicious or vulnerable? The discussion moves beyond looks to dissect the political calculations of the King’s rule. The calculated monster: The panel contrasts modern portrayals that focus on Henry’s immense power. In ‘Wolf Hall’ (2015), Jessie describes Henry as the “master… the monster” who subtly whispers his murderous desires to Thomas Cromwell. However, Joanne finds the performance “lacklustre,” arguing that it fails to capture the “fire in his eyes” and the physically terrifying presence Henry was known for in his time. This contrasts with Jude Law’s terrifying and grotesque late-life King in Firebrand (2023), where you can palpably feel the menace of a powerful man consumed by his own physical decay. The enduring enigma The experts agree that every portrayal – from Laughton’s funny rogue to Law’s terrifying tyrant – is a work of fiction that must choose one angle to convey. Joanne notes the fascinating paradox that two different films, Anne of the Thousand Days and Firebrand, essentially portray the same grotesque, controlling Henry, yet the viewer’s modern interpretation of that control shifts dramatically – is it repulsive, or is it interpreted as power? The enduring power of Henry VIII lies in these contradictions: he was a brilliant scholar, a charismatic athlete, and an unforgiving tyrant. So, which version of Henry VIII is the most historically convincing, and which one is the panel’s favourite? Join Professor Suzannah Lipscomb and her expert panel as they dissect the King’s cinematic afterlife and reveal the historical truth behind the actors in Not Just The Tudors… Lates.

Spanberger: 'Let Your Rage Fuel You'

Free Speech, Foreign Policy, and ... Shopping Carts? A Conversation With John Ondrasik

"Honestly, this is where I thought it may land wrong: I hope we are forgotten," Commander Reid Wiseman said.

And it appears to have been lethally chomped by a predator.

Eight years ago, I left network TV behind. I worried that moving to social media wouldn’t work -- that not enough people wanted news alongside cat videos. I also worried that not enough of you would donate to pay for it. Unlike most of what you find on Fox News, CNN, etc., we at Stossel TV do weeks of research. Before we post, seven people fact-check, edit and double-check each other’s work. Would enough of you watch and donate to pay for that? Yes! This month, my channels reached a billion views. Thank you! I am often surprised by which videos you choose to watch. Millions of you watched my long video with National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, about how the NSA invades Americans’ privacy. All my career, I kept videos short. We thought that’s what it took to get people to watch. But Snowden, even at almost two hours, is our most-watched YouTube video. Our most-watched X videos are about government failures, like former President Joe Biden’s promise to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations. In three years, the government built seven. I wish politicians left such things to capitalists. On Instagram and Rumble, my most-watched video is one that took NYC’s government to task for spending $2 million to build a public bathroom in a park. When I confronted the parks commissioner, pointing out that big houses cost less than his bathroom, he smiled and said “$2 million was a good deal” because the government pays union wages. “It’s a good thing.” Our most-watched Facebook video is one in which scientists put common climate change fears into perspective. Climatologist Patrick Michaels: “It’s warmed up around one degree Celsius since 1900, and life expectancy doubled in the industrialized democracies. Yet that temperature ticks up another half a degree, and the entire system crashes? That’s the most absurd belief!” That video got 24 million views before, sadly, Facebook censored it. That’s so wrong. I began my NYC TV career doing environmental reporting. I won awards exposing filth in city air, in the Hudson River, and pointing out the need for pollution control. That was then. Now activists fake environmental threats to raise money. MSNBC: “Climate change could create a massive global food shortage!” Former President Barack Obama believed that, saying climate change “is already making it more difficult to produce food.” The opposite is true. Food production has increased dramatically. The zealots claim America’s bees are dying off. A “bee-pocalypse,” shrieked ABC News. But the bee population has been going up! They claim polar bears are disappearing. But there are more polar bears now. It’s good we now have alternatives to so-called mainstream media. I hate that they cluelessly mock things that make life better, like capitalism. Not only is it cruel, but “Capitalism is making you lonely,” declares Jacobin. “Capitalism makes us feel empty inside,” says Vox. No wonder 62 percent of young Americans have a “favorable view” of socialism. That’s the main reason I built Stossel TV: to try to teach young people that socialism always fails, while a free market, greedy and crass as it often is, creates prosperity. I’m now training “Stossel Fellows,” young people who will carry on after me. One I’ve worked with is Gloria Alvarez of Guatemala. She’s become a Latin American influencer, making videos that say: “The thing with socialism is it’s like a beautiful iceberg ... the tip, all about brotherhood, free stuff, ‘we’re all going to get along.’ But below sea level is the misery and the genocide and injustice.” By contrast, the free-market iceberg “looks horrible in the tip. It’s all about selfishness, greed, individualism and capitalism.” Out of sight, below the water, is where “progress and freedom and tolerance and thriving economies actually happen.” Over the past 30 years, those hard-to-see forces lifted a billion people out of extreme poverty. Most of what makes life better happens because of the market. I hope to keep reporting on that for another billion views.

Stephen Colbert’s week of inviting Democratic politicians to CBS and The Late Show continued on Wednesday with Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy. Colbert began by praising Murphy’s gun control advocacy as he tried to use the shooting at the Dallas ICE facility to push the idea. Murphy, meanwhile, tried to argue that it was actually President Trump doing the politicizing because political violence should not be seen as a left-wing or right-wing thing. After introducing Murphy, Colbert let the praise flow, “Before we get into anything else, right off the top, I just want to point out and let everybody know that you have been a tireless advocate for gun control for years now. And as you know, and I think most of the people out here know, today there was another tragic shooting. This time at an ICE facility down in Dallas.” He then wondered, “We don't know a lot about it so far. What goes through your mind when you hear about another shooting like this?”     After talking about the impact on families and communities, Murphy claimed it is also about “this anger, this anxiety that we all have about why we can't make a simple decision as a nation to put an end to this violence, whether it be mass violence, whether it be shootings on our streets, whether it be political violence.” Murphy added, “We don't yet know the motives here. But we are obviously amidst a moment with an increase in political violence, and it just shouldn't matter. It shouldn't matter whether the radicalization comes from the right or the left or some non-ideological place in the deep dark recesses of the internet, this president, our entire political process, could make a decision to draw a line in the sand.” He also claimed we shouldn’t politicize the shooting before going after Trump, “And it just sickens me that we have a president who, instead of trying to stand up and say wherever the violence comes from, it's unacceptable, is politicizing this moment. So, it's about the victims and it's about a mourning of a loss of a potential moment to bring this country together.” For his part, Colbert tried to bring it back to gun control, “I mean, there really hasn't been much movement to rein in the access to the long guns and many of the weapons that are used in these killings, but, I mean, hopefully, maybe there could be a political sea change in the United States.” While Colbert and Murphy claim we don’t know the motive, we knew at the time of recording that the shooter had “anti-ICE” written on the bullets. It is also true that the shooter used a bolt-action rifle, the very type of hunting rifle that even liberals insist they do not want to ban. Furthermore, reporting seems to suggest the guy was passionate in his anti-deportation beliefs. Finally, it was only last week that Colbert tried to argue that right-wing violence was more prevalent than left-wing violence, but now that we have a second major act of left-wing violence in the span of two weeks, Colbert’s guests are saying partisan labeling doesn’t matter, and Colbert himself is back to gun control. Here is a transcript for the September 24-taped show: CBS The Late Show with Stephen Colbert 9/25/2025 12:03 AM ET STEPHEN COLBERT: Before we get into anything else, right off the top, I just want to point out and let everybody know that you have been a tireless advocate for gun control for years now. And as you know, and I think most of the people out here know, today there was another tragic shooting. CHRIS MURPHY: Yean. COLBERT: This time at an ICE facility down in Dallas. We don't know a lot about it so far. What goes through your mind when you hear about another shooting like this? MURPHY: Well, Stephen, you're right. We don't know all the details here. But what really goes through my mind, first, is the families in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, right? I mean, I live through that horror, those parents that were my age at the time are now friends of mine and I know how your life is fundamentally changed, the trauma that ripples through a family and a community when you lose a loved one.  We know there is one person dead here, two critically injured and for me, it's first and foremost about the victims. It's then quickly about this anger, this anxiety that we all have about why we can't make a simple decision as a nation to put an end to this violence, whether it be mass violence, whether it be shootings on our streets, whether it be political violence.  And we don't yet know the motives here. But we are obviously amidst a moment with an increase in political violence, and it just shouldn't matter. It shouldn't matter whether the radicalization comes from the right or the left or some non-ideological place in the deep dark recesses of the internet, this president, our entire political process, could make a decision to draw a line in the sand.  And it just sickens me that we have a president who, instead of trying to stand up and say wherever the violence comes from, it's unacceptable, is politicizing this moment. So, it's about the victims and it's about a mourning of a loss of a potential moment to bring this country together.  COLBERT: I mean, there really hasn't been much movement to rein in the access to the long guns and many of the weapons that are used in these killings, but, I mean, hopefully, maybe there could be a political sea change in the United States.

Questions are still unanswered after a gunman opened fire at a Dallas ICE facility on Wednesday morning. Todd Lyons, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, spoke with Glenn Beck on "The Glenn Beck Program" Thursday morning to give an update on the investigation and to discuss the current milieu of violence in our country. 'I've never seen anything like this in my career.'Beck started the interview with a question about the rising tide of violence in the United States. Lyons told him, "I've never seen anything like this in my career." However, Lyons added that the violence "won't deter us," noting that brave law enforcement officers continued their dangerous work on Thursday. RELATED: DHS: Deadly Dallas ICE shooting came a month after bomb threat at same office — (@) While Lyons didn't want to get ahead of the official investigation, he did dispel media rumors about the shooter's motive after the three victims, two murdered and one injured, were determined to be immigration detainees. Lyons told Beck this was "a pure attack on ICE law enforcement and ICE's mission." "He didn't know who was in the vehicle," Lyons added. It would be "dead wrong" to suggest any other motive other than "anti-ICE," as was written on the unspent shell and demonstrated by the nature of the shooting. — (@) They also discussed the Trump administration's crackdown on left-wing terrorism, particularly concerning reports about the John Brown Gun Club's alleged "Hey, fascist! Catch!" posters. Lyons suggested that many of these left-wing agitators are "professional" with "no ties to the community" — all the more reason to fight against them as domestic terrorists. RELATED: 'Hey, fascist! Catch!' Leftist group apparently recruiting college students with slogan tied to Kirk murder Photo by Stewart F. House/Getty ImagesBeck also asked Lyons about the coverage of a recent arrest made by law enforcement that received "distorted" coverage by NBC and other outlets. NBC reported that law enforcement "held" a 5-year-old autistic girl hostage in an attempt to negotiate the arrest of the girl's father. According to DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, the man "fled from the car, gave officers the double middle finger, and darted inside his house. He abandoned his 5-year-old daughter in the car."NBC later issued a correction, stating that its initial reporting "mischaracterized the activities of ICE agents in the video."Lyons made it clear that the father fled the vehicle and that law enforcement simply took care of the girl during that time. Beck and Lyons also took aim at Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom's recent comments about ICE being "authoritarian." "The governor shouldn't have said that," Lyons told Beck. He added that the masks worn by law enforcement are a matter of safety as officers have seen a rise in doxxing and threats to their livelihood. Lyons announced that the U.S. attorney will be holding a press conference Thursday afternoon.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

While Democrats continue to dig their heels in ahead of the looming deadline to avert a government shutdown, the White House has made clear that the administration is willing to go nuclear. The Office of Management and Budget, headed by Director Russell Vought, escalated the already tense funding fight by threatening mass firings across the federal workforce if Democrats shut down the government. In a new memo, the OMB directed agencies to identify programs whose funding lapses after the September 30 deadline and instructed them to begin drafting reduction in force notes for employees who may be affected. Democrats introduced their own bill containing a $1.5 trillion 'progressive reckless wish list.'"Over the past 10 fiscal years, Congress has consistently passed Continuing Resolutions on or by September 30 on a bipartisan basis," the memo reads. "Unfortunately, congressional Democrats are signaling that they intend to break this bipartisan trend and shut down the government in the coming days over a series of insane demands, including $1 trillion in new spending.""As such, it has never been more important for the administration to be prepared for a shutdown if the Democrats choose to pursue one."RELATED: GOP slams Democrat spending plan as 'stale leftovers' riddled with radical left-wing policies Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty ImagesThe House narrowly passed the GOP-led continuing resolution in a 217-212 vote, seeking to keep the government open through November 21. The funding bill was a clean 91-page CR that included anomalies to increase funding for security, allocating $30 million for Congress, $30 million for the executive branch, and $28 million for the judicial branch.As the memo points out, the clean CR was consistent with previous bipartisan funding bills. Despite this, Democrats refused to reach across the aisle to keep the government open and instead introduced their own bill containing a $1.5 trillion "progressive reckless wish list."The Senate is now tasked with taking up the CR just days before the deadline. RELATED: Most Democrats vote against bill boosting security funds for politicians following Kirk assassination Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty ImagesSenate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said the Trump administration's threat to fire federal workers is just an "attempt at intimidation." Notably, the shutdown would not affect programs like Social Security, Medicare, veterans' benefits, law enforcement, military operations, Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and air traffic control. "This is an attempt at intimidation," Schumer said in a post on X. "Donald Trump has been firing federal workers since day one — not to govern, but to scare. This is nothing new and has nothing to do with funding the government. These unnecessary firings will either be overturned in court or the administration will end up hiring the workers back, just like they did as recently as this week."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

A Texas elementary school teacher has been arrested and accused of grabbing two children by their throats at school, according to reports.Gail Patterson, 61, was arrested Sept. 15 following a Benbrook Police Department investigation, according to KTVT-TV. Patterson has since been released from jail.'This is a profound betrayal of trust.'Patterson is charged with two counts of injury to a child.Patterson had been a teacher at Westpark Elementary School in Benbrook.The Fort Worth Independent School District confirmed to Blaze News that Patterson was placed on administrative leave in August and no longer employed by the district "following an incident involving a student."The school district said it has cooperated fully with law enforcement and child protective services since August.According to the Benbrook Police Department, the alleged incident against two fourth-grade students occurred Aug. 20 during the school day.RELATED: Former high school teacher pleads guilty to sexually assaulting students — and now she's 'brought to justice' WFAA-TV reported that a mother identified only as Catie said her 9-year-old daughter called her from school "crying, inconsolable, saying a teacher choked her."According to an arrest affidavit, Patterson removed Catie’s daughter and another student from class after the two fourth-graders were caught talking.Catie told WFAA that school officials showed her surveillance video capturing the alleged incident in a school hallway."Within two seconds, she grabs the first student by the neck, then grabs my daughter, holds them both against the wall for 11 seconds while she's in their face," Catie said.Authorities have not released the surveillance video.Catie claimed that nobody from the school contacted her regarding the alleged assault, despite her daughter telling three teachers about it.What's more, the mother is furious over the school's response, telling WFAA that "I was disgusted. It hurt. Knowing we trusted a school after coming from homeschool. We trusted them to take care of our child, and no teacher in that school took care of my child that day."Catie's attorney, Ty Stimpson, added, "They don't want to see Ms. Patterson teaching or having any involvement with kids anymore."Stimpson told KTVT, "This is a profound betrayal of trust. When you send a child to school, you expect them to be nurtured and protected, not victimized by their teacher.""While it can be a challenge to take on legal action against a school district, Fort Worth ISD has established policies that must be followed," Stimpson continued. "We are guiding these families through this process, ensuring that the students' complaints and grievances are addressed. We have requested that the teacher be terminated and permanently barred from returning to any school in the district."Attorneys representing the alleged victims are moving forward with a formal complaint through Fort Worth ISD and are "calling for accountability to include safeguards and staff training," according to WFAA. The district has until next week to submit a formal response to the complaint, Stimpson said.When Patterson was asked for comment, she said, "Go away," according to WFAA.Benbrook Police did not immediately respond to Blaze News' request for comment about the arrest.The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that Patterson was listed on the Westpark PTA website as a special-education inclusion teacher in the school’s SPED/RISE program but that "her name has since been removed." An archived version of the website from last November shows Patterson listed as a special-education inclusion teacher in the school's SPED/RISE program.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!