Henry VIII was a man of insatiable appetites. The historian David Starkey aptly dubbed him “the king whose shape everybody remembers”.

He was famously fat, famously free with his beheadings, and prolific in love and lust.

In addition to the wars and the wives, Henry VIII was a major player in the British property market. By the end of his reign, he was the proud owner of no fewer than 55 palaces.

Of these, Hampton Court, a gift from Cardinal Wolsey, was perhaps the country’s original extravagant, over-budget renovation project. 

Henry spent the equivalent of nearly £20m in today’s money on a five-year project, making the property bigger, kitting out the kitchens so that they could serve 1,600 meals per day, and installing a Tudor leisure complex complete with bowling alleys. The impatient king made his masons work by candlelight through the night.