Henry VIII sporting great the perfect part for Damian Lewis

Since the cast was announced for Wolf Hall back in April last year a lot of people

mentioned Damian Lewis might be not…fat enough or more politely

not in the size the famous King was known  for nut as Damian himself often

told press and audience ever since Henry VIII wasn’t at all the opulent King

the whole world imagine him at least not until he had a major accident.

Read more about in the article below from John Henderson:

  

 Damian Lewis, 34ins waist, is to play Henry VIII, 54ins waist, in BBC’s Wolf Hall – but it’s not as daft as it sounds given that in his pomp Henry was a super-fit action man. Read this from my book of sporting heroes…

Henry VIII’s competitive drive, characteristic of ambitious second sons, showed no sign of diminishing when his older brother, Arthur, died in 1502. Henry was still ten at the time; seven years later on the death of his father, Henry VII, he was crowned king. The responsibilities of leading a nation with an expanding foreign policy, the distraction of internal strife caused by the Reformation and the demands of a complicated private life coud not quell Henry’s lust for action. 

This paragon of princes, as robust as Arthur had been sickly, sought other outlets – and in finding them laid claim to being the first and greatest of all-round sportsmen. He could bend a bow with the best foresters in the land, matching them at shooting at the butts (targets) and flight shooting (distance). He was a champion at tennis – seeing him play was ‘the prettiest thing in the world’ in the view of the Venetian ambassador to London – and a jouster whose immense suit of tilting armour in the Tower of London gives a hint of his prowess in the lists. 

The Dutch humanist and scholar Erasmus reckoned he had seen no finer thrower of a hunting dart, having seen the King kill a deer with a single hit. He was so keen on bowling that he took a 90 feet by 8 feet indoor bowling shed with him on an expedition against France. He competed impressively at two-handed sword tournaments, the use of armour and blunted swords being encouraged to restrict fatalities, and loved to wrestle. His most famous wrestling match, against Francis I at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in northern France, ended in controversy. The English camp claimed Henry was felled by an illegal ‘Breton trip’ and did not report it; French chronicles made much of Francis’s brilliant victory. Henry employed an Italian coach to help him perfect an early version of dressage and gave hour-long deomostrations that included many elaborate manoeuvres, climaxing with a thousand jumps in the air. He had racing stables at Greenwich and Windsor and four jockeys who wore ‘ryding cappes of blac veilute and 22 butons of golde to garish them’. On top of all this, he built some of the great sporting arenas of the age.

 His palaces at Greenwich and Whitehall included tiltyards for jousting, bowling alleys, tennis courts and cock pits.

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