Not Just the Tudors
Episodes
How to Crown a Tudor Queen
23 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Four women were crowned in England between 1509 and 1559: two Queens consort - Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn - and England’s first two Queens ...
Isabel Clara Eugenia: Early Modern Europe's Most Powerful Woman
20 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Isabel Clara Eugenia was the heir to the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal, but she was never crowned Queen. But despite this, her life provides a fascin...
Mary II and Anne: Sister Queens
16 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
To mark the Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, June is Queenship month on Not Just the Tudors. Our series continues with a look at two of Britain...
How to Become Queen in Early Modern Europe
13 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Early Modern Europe, Queens did not come fully formed. Rather, a series of rites, rituals and ceremonies transformed a hesitant bride into a fully ...
The Queen Who Was Crowned King
09 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Not Just the Tudors’ month-long season on Queenship continues with a look at the fascinating Christina Varsa, who was crowned King of Sweden on 20 O...
Tudor England's Foreign Queens
06 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Not Just the Tudors’ special month-long look at Queenship continues with an exploration of the popular perception of those foreign Queens who came t...
Queen Consorts in the Renaissance
02 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout this month, every episode of Not Just the Tudors is honouring Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee by focussing on some aspect of Queenshi...
Isabella & Ferdinand's Granada
30 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 Man Who Broke Michelangelo's Nose
26 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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, b...
Religious Exiles in Early Modern Europe
23 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Facing persecution in Elizabethan England, some Catholics chose exile over conformity. Some even cast their lot with foreign monarchs rather than wait...
Anne Boleyn: Dispelling the Myths
19 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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...
The English Civil War: Loyalty House
16 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Civil War was the most traumatic conflict in British history, pitting friends and family members against each other, tearing down the old order.Aw...
The Founding of Jamestown
12 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
415 years ago this month, 104 English men and boys landed in North America and established a settlement they called Jamestown in Virginia. Over t...
How to Treat Depression in 17th Century England
09 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
To mark Mental Health Awareness Week, Not Just the Tudors casts a 21st century eye over "one of the most perplexing, elusive, attractive, and afflicti...
Sex & The Tudors
05 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 h...
Walter Raleigh's Quest for El Dorado
02 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sir Walter Raleigh remains one of the enduring names from the Elizabethan era. He was a true Renaissance man - a statesman, soldier, writer, explorer ...
Suleyman the Magnificent
28 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 j...
Discovering Hampton Court
25 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 b...
Milton's Paradise Lost: An Epic Poem
21 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1667 - 355 years ago this month - a young London publisher called Samuel Simmons printed a very important book - John Milton's Paradise Lost. Milto...
How Tudor England Treated Outsiders
18 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The recently released film Lapwing is set during the Tudor period, one year after the Egyptian Act of 1554 effectively criminalised Romani people and ...
The House of Dudley
14 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Francesca Caccini: Composer to the Medicis
11 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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...
The Tudors in Portraits
07 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Visitors to the Holburne Museum in Bath are having a close encounter with the most familiar faces in English history. A stunning exhibition, The ...
The Taj Mahal & the Emperor Who Built It
04 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 k...
François I, King of France
31 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
François I of France not only introduced the Renaissance to France, he became the perfect Renaissance king - an inspiring military leader, a charisma...
Anne Boleyn's Early Life
28 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
March 2022 marks the 500th anniversary of Anne Boleyn's first recorded appearance at the English court. To celebrate, Hever Castle - Anne's child...
The Founding of Cape Town
24 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb explores the story of a shipwreck that led to the creation of a city and a nation....
The End of Monasteries
21 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII ended almost a millennium of monastic life in England, resulting in a dislocation of people and a ...
Henry VIII's Courtier, Sir Thomas Wyatt
17 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
No one represented the complexities of the court of Henry VIII better than Sir Thomas Wyatt, a skilled diplomat who was forced to live with the moral ...
The Real Cyrano de Bergerac
14 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
One of the world's much loved stage and screen characters has just returned to the cinema in a new film version starring Peter Dinklage. But what...
Elizabeth Stuart: The Forgotten Queen
10 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As a contribution to International Women's Day last Tuesday, this episode of Not Just the Tudors is a tribute to one of the great - but largely forgot...
Elizabeth I's Favourite Painter: Hilliard
07 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Born in Exeter in 1547, the miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard left to posterity some of the most famous and enduring images of Queen Elizabeth I. But who ...
How the Tudors Told Time
03 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How time passes - or how it is understood to pass - itself has a fascinating history. For the Tudors, the uneven hours of the Medieval reckoning were ...
Same-Sex Marriages in Renaissance Rome
28 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
All this month on the History Hit family of podcasts, we've been marking LGBT+ History Month. To round off the month, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb...
Oliver Cromwell's Wife and Daughters
24 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How can women be reinstated into the narrative of history when their presence is only faintly attested to in the remaining sources? How can fiction he...
Escaping Slavery in London
21 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1655, White Londoners began advertising in newspapers to retrieve enslaved people who had escaped. Groundbreaking research is bringing to ligh...
Women's Work in 17th Century London
17 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the late 17th century, young women arrived in London to earn their own living, with mistresses setting up shops and supervising female apprentices....
The Glencoe Massacre
14 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the early hours of 13 February 1692, in the rugged and beautiful mountains of Glencoe in the Scottish Highlands, some 30 members and associates of ...
Kateryn Parr: Henry VIII's Sixth Queen
10 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Kateryn Parr - as she herself wrote her name - is often portrayed as a colourless, prudish figure, known mainly for surviving her marriage to King Hen...
Travel in the Ming Dynasty
07 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Around the same time as the Mayflower was landing at Cape Cod, on the other side of the world tourism was thriving in China, giving rise to a fascinat...
Edward VI: The Last Boy King
03 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Edward VI, son of Henry VIII, became King of England at the age of nine. All around him loomed powerful men who hoped to use him to further their own ...
Antwerp: Renaissance Europe's Dazzling Sea Port
31 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Antwerp during the Renaissance was as sensational as nineteenth-century Paris or twentieth-century New York. For half the sixteenth century, it was th...
Death of Henry VIII
27 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
475 years ago, on 28 January 1547, King Henry VIII died at the age of 55. Just hours before his passing, his last will and testament had been read, st...
Henry VIII & Jousting
24 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the world of King Henry VIII, the paramount place to demonstrate physical strength and manly courage was the joust - and Henry excelled at it.In th...
Kate Mosse: Writing Historical Fiction
20 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Kate Mosse is the multimillion-selling author of the Languedoc Trilogy - Labyrinth, Sepulchre and Citadel. With her new novel The City of Tears, ...
Cardinal Wolsey
17 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 tr...
Elizabeth I & Mary, Queen of Scots
13 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots were cousins who never met - but their fates were intertwined. As their nations were engulfed in religious turmoi...
1492: The Year the Spanish Monarchy Changed the World
10 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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, exp...
Franz Hals: Painter of The Laughing Cavalier
06 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 fam...
2022: A Year of Major Anniversaries
03 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 1...
A Happy Tudor New Year
30 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Biggest Tudor Discoveries 2021
27 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 achieve...
Tudor Ghosts and Angels
23 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
To this day, the presence of angels is synonymous with the Christmas story and the momentous events associated with the Nativity. For the Tudors ...
Witches of Iceland
20 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Iceland in the 17th century, witchcraft accusations, trials and convictions occurred later than in the rest of Europe. But also unusual was th...
Tudor Box Set Binge
16 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Dürer: The Great Renaissance Artist
13 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Albrecht Dürer was the greatest German artist to come out of the Renaissance, whose high quality woodcuts revolutionised the potential of the medium....
True Crime on the Elizabethan Stage
09 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The true crime genre - stories of actual murders and other crimes that are then fictionalised - is not a new phenomenon. More than four centuries...
The Murder of Rizzio, Mary Queen of Scots' Favourite
06 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 Quee...
Black Tudors
02 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Our image of the Tudor era remains overwhelmingly white. But the black presence in England was much greater than has previously been recognised, and T...
How Powerful was Henry VIII?
29 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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...
The First Gun Crime in London
25 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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.&nbs...
Henry VIII's Wives on Stage: Six - The Musical
22 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Did Thomas Seymour Groom Elizabeth Tudor?
18 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 Eli...
Oliver Cromwell
15 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Oliver Cromwell - the only commoner to have become Britain's head of state - has puzzled biographers for centuries. He was a complex character, c...
The Last Witches in England
11 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1682, three impoverished women from Bideford in Devon were hanged, becoming the last people to be executed for witchcraft in England. The evid...
England: Devil-Land 1588-1688
08 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the 17th century, England was known as "Devil-Land" - a diabolical country torn apart by seditious rebellion, religious extremism and royal collaps...
Ottoman Empire in the Renaissance
04 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Ottoman Empire has long been seen as the Islamic-Asian opposite of the Christian-European West. But the reality was very different: the Ottom...
Singing the News in Tudor England
01 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In an age before newspapers and mass media, how did the general public keep abreast of what was going on? How did they find out about the seismic...
The Love Letters of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn
28 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the Vatican Library, there survive 17 highly personal love letters, written in King Henry VIII's own hand to Anne Boleyn between 1527 and 1528.&nbs...
Witches & Puritans
25 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On a remote Massachusetts plantation in 1651, an unpopular local brickmaker was blamed for a wave of animal ailments, children dying and vanishing pro...
Massacre of the Huguenots
21 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The royal wedding of Marguerite de Valois and Henri de Navarre on 18 August 1572, was designed to reconcile France’s Catholics and Protestants - or ...
Mary I's Husband: Philip II of Spain
18 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Philip II of Spain - the most powerful monarch of the early modern period - was married to Queen Mary Tudor from 1554 until her death in 1558. But Phi...
How Catherine of Aragon Learnt to be Queen
14 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Spanish infanta Catalina of Aragon was raised to be a Queen, betrothed at the age of three to the heir apparent of the English throne, Arthur Prin...
The 1549 Kett's Rebellion
11 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1549, the Tudor establishment was rocked by a series of popular rebellions, born of deep discontent over the enclosure by wealthy landowners of com...
17th & 18th Century Sexual Revolution
07 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For most of western history, sex outside of marriage was forbidden by law, with adulterers even facing the death sentence. The church, the state and n...
Lady Jane Grey
04 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On a cold February morning in 1554, Lady Jane Grey was beheaded for high treason. Named as King Edward VI as his successor, Queen Jane had reigned for...
Sir Thomas More
30 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Who was Thomas More - Knight, Chancellor and Martyr? His life is paradoxical, with More regarded as both saint and persecutor, Humanist intellectual a...
The Gunpowder Plot: Tudor Origins
27 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Gunpowder Plot is one of the hinge events of British history - an act of terror the roots of which stretch back to the Tudor period and Henry VIII...
Holbein and the Tudor Court
23 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1530s, the painter Hans Holbein the Younger returns to London. His patronage by Anne Boleyn and the influential Thomas Cromwell leads to ...
Hans Holbein's Early Years
20 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Hans Holbein the Younger is celebrated for his hyper-realistic, iconic portraits of Henry VIII, Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, Anne of Cleves, Jane Sey...
Clothing Tudor Queens
16 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How did Tudor Queens clothe themselves? How did female fashion change over Henry VIII's reign? Did foreign Queens influence English fashion or adopt i...
Islam and the Elizabethans
13 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Elizabeth I's excommunication by the Pope in 1570 marked the beginning of an extraordinary - and little talked about - English alignment with Muslim p...
Making Babies in the 17th Century
09 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Making babies was a mysterious process for people in early modern England. Their ideas about conception, pregnancy, and childbirth tell us much about ...
Ottoman Traveller: Fynes Moryson
06 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In July 1596, Fynes Moryson - a Lincolnshire gentleman and travel writer - was struck down with grief when his younger brother died as they crossed th...
Tudors in Love
02 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The dramas of courtly love have captivated readers and dreamers for centuries. Yet they’re often dismissed as something that existed only in the leg...
Accused of Witchcraft
30 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Not all suspicions of witchcraft led to a formal accusation, and not all such accusations led to trials and execution. During the entire early mo...
Henry VIII's Break with Rome
26 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
King Henry VIII was deeply religious and started out as a staunch supporter of the Pope and the Roman Catholic church. But everything changed when Hen...
The Biblical Apocalypse in Münster
23 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Between February 1534 and June 1535, the German city of Münster was seized and ruled over by a radical group of Protestant Christians called Ana...
Beauty Ideals in the 16th Century
19 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What was the 16th century ideal of beauty for women? Fat or thin? Blonde or brunette? Pale or tanned? How did women keep clean? Did they remove t...
Bloody Mary vs. The Virgin Queen
16 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Queen Mary I has had a bad press over the centuries, her five-years on the throne overshadowed by her half-sister Elizabeth's 45-year reign. Whil...
Alessandro de' Medici, Black Prince of Florence
12 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the cut-throat world of Renaissance Florence, Alessandro - the illegitimate son of a Duke and a mixed-race servant - attempts to reassert the Medic...
Henry VIII: Defender of the Faith
09 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Five hundred years ago in 1521, the title 'Defender of the Faith' was bestowed by Pope Leo X upon King Henry VIII for his defence of the Catholic Chur...
The Witches of Lorraine
05 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1570 and 1630, there was intense persecution and thousands of executions of suspected witches in Lorraine, a small duchy on the borders of Fra...
Beards
02 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For the Tudors and Elizabethans, a beard denoted masculinity while beardlessness indicated boyhood or effeminacy. How a man wore his beard - or n...
Sor Juana: Poet, Nun, Martyr
29 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Though she is relatively unknown outside of Mexico, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz - poet, playwright and nun - is an icon and national hero in her homela...
Catherine Howard
26 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Catherine Howard was Queen Consort - and fifth wife - to Henry VIII for just 16 months before he had her executed for treason for committing adultery....
Martin Luther
22 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A controversial figure during his lifetime, Martin Luther set in motion a revolution that split Christianity in the West and left an indelible mark on...
Elizabeth I and Catherine de' Medici
19 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The relationship between Elizabeth I and Catherine de' Medici - the two most powerful Queens of their time - is one of the most intriguing and captiva...
16th Century Feminists
15 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this edition of Not Just The Tudors, Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Hannah Dawson, editor of The Penguin Book of Feminist Writing who draws upon poems,...
Sodomy & Sex Crimes in France
12 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the 16th and 17th centuries and beyond, certain sexual acts were made capital crimes in England, France and other countries. The offence of "s...