Not Just the Tudors

Not Just the Tudors’ special month-long look at Queenship continues with an exploration of the popular perception of those foreign Queens who came to England in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Catherine …

Throughout this month, every episode of Not Just the Tudors is honouring Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee by focussing on some aspect of Queenship in the Early Modern period. 

In this first explo…

From the early Middle Ages to the present day, travellers have been bewitched by the peerless beauty of Granada. From 1230 until 1492, it was ruled by the Nasrids - Spain's last Islamic dynasty - fro…

Pietro Torrigiano is credited with introducing Renaissance art to England in the early years of the 16th century and designed the tomb of Henry VII, but he is best remembered for breaking the nose of…

Facing persecution in Elizabethan England, some Catholics chose exile over conformity. Some even cast their lot with foreign monarchs rather than wait for their own rulers to have a change of heart. …

There are so many myths about Anne Boleyn - among them that she had six fingers, that she was a murderess, even that she was Henry VIII's own daughter. In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, release…

The Civil War was the most traumatic conflict in British history, pitting friends and family members against each other, tearing down the old order.

Award-winning historian Jessie Childs plunges the r…

415 years ago this month, 104 English men and boys landed in North America and established a settlement they called Jamestown in Virginia. Over the course of the 17th Century, a third of a million pe…

To mark Mental Health Awareness Week, Not Just the Tudors casts a 21st century eye over "one of the most perplexing, elusive, attractive, and afflicting diseases of the Renaissance" - melancholy - an…

There’s not an infinite number of ways that humans can act on sexual desire. Human bodies haven’t changed, but the cultural landscape around sex has. What people believed about it, the morality surro…

Sir Walter Raleigh remains one of the enduring names from the Elizabethan era. He was a true Renaissance man - a statesman, soldier, writer, explorer and a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I. In 1594, Ra…

The Ottoman Sultan Suleyman I - known as "Suleyman the Magnificent" in the West - was the most feared and powerful man of the sixteenth century. His journey to power was built on brutal choices and i…

Many of the private and public dramas in the life of Henry VIII took place at Hampton Court Palace. Begun in 1514 for Cardinal Wolsey, Hampton Court became one of Henry VIII's favourite residences. S…

In 1667 - 355 years ago this month - a young London publisher called Samuel Simmons printed a very important book - John Milton's Paradise Lost. Milton had come to the fore in radical politics and, f…

The recently released film Lapwing is set during the Tudor period, one year after the Egyptian Act of 1554 effectively criminalised Romani people and others - generically labelled "Egyptians" - and t…

The Dudleys were the most brilliant, bold and manipulative of power-hungry Tudor families. Every Tudor monarch made their name either with a Dudley at their side - or by crushing one beneath their fe…

Francesca Caccini (1587-c.1641) is one of the forgotten women of classical music. She was an exceptional singer and instrumentalist, but above all, an immensely talented composer. Working full time a…

Visitors to the Holburne Museum in Bath are having a close encounter with the most familiar faces in English history. A stunning exhibition, The Tudors: Passion, Power and Politics, includes some of …

The Taj Mahal was commissioned 390 years ago by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal. But what can we know about the king from the exquisite love temple he b…

François I of France not only introduced the Renaissance to France, he became the perfect Renaissance king - an inspiring military leader, a charismatic diplomat, an art collector and a lover of lite…