Not Just the Tudors

No advisor was more important to King Henry VIII than Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. He captured Henry's attention with his brilliance and became his most trusted confidant. But when the King wanted to divo…

Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots were cousins who never met - but their fates were intertwined. As their nations were engulfed in religious turmoil and civil wars raged on the continent, these tw…

2022 marks the 530th anniversary of 1492 - the year in which Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille ended centuries of Muslim rule in Spain, expelled the country's Jews, and signed a contract w…

One of the most famous paintings in London is The Laughing Cavalier of 1624 by Franz Hals, the great portrait artist of the Dutch Golden Age whose fame has been somewhat eclipsed by Vermeer and Rembr…

Happy New Year from Not Just the Tudors! But what, looking back, can we look forward to in 2022? Our first episode of the year anticipates 12 months filled with fascinating historical exhibitions and…

For the Tudors, Christmas Day was not traditionally the date when gifts were given. The Twelve Days of Christmas begin on 25 December and end at Epiphany, 6 January - also known as Twelfth Night. In …

In this special end of the year edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb takes a look back at 2021 and the major events and achievements that have changed the way we understand the…

To this day, the presence of angels is synonymous with the Christmas story and the momentous events associated with the Nativity. For the Tudors and Stuarts, widespread belief in angels brought a tou…

In Iceland in the 17th century, witchcraft accusations, trials and convictions occurred later than in the rest of Europe. But also unusual was the fact that 91% of "witches" executed in Iceland were …

If you are planning your television viewing over the holidays, especially if you are looking forward to bingeing on the best Tudor dramas and classic film depictions of the era, Professor Suzannah Li…

Albrecht Dürer was the greatest German artist to come out of the Renaissance, whose high quality woodcuts revolutionised the potential of the medium. A spectacular exhibition at the National Gallery …

The true crime genre - stories of actual murders and other crimes that are then fictionalised - is not a new phenomenon. More than four centuries ago, a series of plays based on real life cases appea…

On 9 March 1566, David Rizzio - close friend and private secretary to Mary, Queen of Scots - was stabbed dozens of times in front of the pregnant Queen at the instigation of her husband, Lord Darnley…

Our image of the Tudor era remains overwhelmingly white. But the black presence in England was much greater than has previously been recognised, and Tudor conceptions of race were far more complex th…

Was Henry VIII as all-powerful and tyrannical as we have come to believe? Is the scheming of Thomas Cromwell portrayed in Wolf Hall close to the truth? What were the roles of the clergy, or parliamen…

Early in the morning of Sunday 13 November 1536, a London merchant named Robert Pakington was shot dead crossing Cheapside as he walked to church. It was the first gun crime in London's history. But …

Since its first outing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2017, the stage musical Six has become a worldwide theatre sensation. In it, the six wives of Henry VIII are re-imagined as a girl band, com…

In 1547, the 14-year-old future Queen Elizabeth I is living with her step-mother Queen Catherine Parr and her new husband Thomas Seymour, uncle to Elizabeth's half-brother King Edward VI. But when Se…

Oliver Cromwell - the only commoner to have become Britain's head of state - has puzzled biographers for centuries. He was a complex character, courageous but at the same time devious and self-servin…

In 1682, three impoverished women from Bideford in Devon were hanged, becoming the last people to be executed for witchcraft in England. The evidence against them was flimsy and their conviction was …