Old Tom Parr with Emma Kate Lanyon (Ep 200)

Born in the late 1480s, and dying an astonishing one hundred and fifty two years later in 1635, Old Tom Parr is famous for living longer than any man in England before or since his lifetime. Overlapping Shakespeare’s lifetime entirely, being born before the bard and living more than twenty years after the bard’s death, Old Tom Parr was born in Alderbury, England, and lived in Shropshire, where still today there is a small cottage called Old Parr’s Cottage that you can visit today. The cottage’s preservation and that of Old Tom Parr’s memory is a testament to this man’s extraordinarily long life. His longevity has been attributed to a unique diet, and specifically enjoying what one 16th Century physician called a “care free” life. To put the length of his life into perspective, Old Tom Parr would have lived through both the Battle of Bosworth, and Shakespeare’s retelling of it on the early modern stage over 100 years later. A portrait of Old Tom Parr hangs in the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery, and one of the curators there, Emma Kate Lanyon, joins us today to share the history of this portrait, as well as details into the surprising life, and death, of the longest living man from Shakespeare’s lifetime: the real Old Tom Parr Get bonus episodes on Patreon

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