Suzannah Lipscomb talks about everything from the Aztecs to witches, Velázquez to Shakespeare, Mughal India to the Mayflower. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors.
Each episode Suzannah is joined by historians and experts to reveal incredible stories about one of the most fascinating periods in history.
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Dame Hilary Mantel died on 22 September 2022 at the age of 70. Her acclaimed Wolf Hall trilogy - which brought the life of Thomas Cromwell so vividly to life - has sold more than five million copies worldwide. She won the Booker Prize twice - for Wolf Hall and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies.
In...
Exactly forty years ago, in a groundbreaking and spectacular piece of marine conservation that captured the imagination of the world, the Mary Rose was raised from the seabed. The warship, commissioned by Henry VIII in 1511, sank on 19 July 1545 during an encounter between French and English flee...
The Royal African Company was set up in 1660 - by the ruling Stuart family and City of London merchants - to exploit gold fields up the Gambia River. But it soon developed into a brutal and sustained slave trader, shipping more enslaved Africans to the Americas than any other company.
In today’s...
We tend to associate the word ‘dynasty’ with men. But in sixteenth century England, women played a no less important role in these influential families. Among the most powerful were the Howards, which produced two Queens - Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard - as well as numerous women who made thei...
*WARNING: THIS EPISODE CONTAINS VERY STRONG LANGUAGE including the F and C words, and derogatory terms for sex workers. So if you're likely to feel offended by these, please feel free to listen to another episode of Not Just the Tudors!*`
From the Ancient World to today, there have always been t...
This week marks 600 years since the death of King Henry V, perhaps best known for his military successes during the Hundred Years War against France and in particular his victory at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.
But because this is Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb has decided t...
The German executioner Meister Frantz Schmidt kept a fascinating journal of all the executions, torture and punishments he administered between 1573 and 1618.
In this episode of Not Just the Tudors - originally released in June 2021 - Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by Joel Harrington to talk about...
Thomas Cromwell was an extraordinary figure in the Tudor court. Lawyer, politician, minister and peer of the realm, Cromwell deployed all of his wisdom, charisma, strategic cunning and considerable intellect to break England away from Rome, reform parliament and create royal supremacy. But who w...
Hardly anything has been written about the musicians who carried out many important tasks in England’s maritime ventures during the Elizabethan age. That is until now. Pioneering research has revealed that performers played a vital role, including using music to build relationships with the inhab...
In Renaissance Italy, the Borgia family were admired for their audacity and their ruthlessness - they even inspired Mario Puzo’s depiction of the Corleones in The Godfather. But do the Borgias deserve their reputation? How did they rise to power? How did a man with so many illegitimate children b...
What do you get when you bring together five top historians in a room with bottles of Prosecco to debate Elizabeth I on screen? History with the gloves off - our first Not Just the Tudors Lates!
Taking as her starting point the new series Becoming Elizabeth - now streaming on Starz - Professor ...
Queen Elizabeth I has been depicted on the big and small screen more times than most of her contemporaries. Now, a critically acclaimed TV series Becoming Elizabeth - streaming on Starz - traces the turbulent early years of Elizabeth, negotiating all the political intrigues of the court on her jo...
The great diarist Samuel Pepys was an avid collector of books, news and gossip, and reading was a major part of his life and the lives of his contemporaries.
In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb delves into Pepys’s life and wide-ranging interests with Dr. Kate Lovem...
The Cambridgeshire village of Warboys was the scene of one of the most famous English witch trials of the sixteenth century. There, the privileged daughters of the respected Squire Throckmorton accused a cantankerous elderly neighbour of witchcraft, sending the impoverished Alice Samuel to her de...
The New Model Army was one of the most formidable fighting forces ever assembled. It played a crucial role in overthrowing King Charles I, propelling one of its most brilliant generals, Oliver Cromwell, to power during the English Revolution. As a fighting force it engineered regicide, pioneered ...
From the sixteenth century through to the end of the eighteenth century, the Venetian government and the Roman Catholic Church jointly established a tribunal to repress heresy throughout the Republic of Venice. The inquisition also intervened in cases of sacrilege, apostasy, prohibited books, sup...
What food - and how much of it - did people eat in the Tudor period? Where did they get it? When did they eat it? What arrangements for cookery and dining were in place in their homes? What did they drink?
In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by Dr. Mark...
Anne of Cleves was the ‘last woman standing’ of Henry VIII’s wives and the only one buried in Westminster Abbey. How did she manage it? Was she in fact a political refugee, supported by the King? Was she a role model for her step-daughters Mary and Elizabeth? Why was her marriage to Henry doomed ...
When Francis Drake returned home from the Spanish West Indies, he carried with him pearls to present as gifts to Elizabeth I. Around London’s Inns of Court, every gentleman smoked a pipe of American tobacco, believing it projected an air of civility. But the cultural impact of colonisation worked...
In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Professor Alan Downie about an author whose life was at least as colourful as those of the characters he created. Apart from writing one of the most famous books of all time, this writer survived the Great Plague and the...
One of the greatest mathematicians and most influential physicists of all time, Isaac Newton was born into a world of turmoil that shaped him and the avenues he chose to explore.
In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to science historian Professor Robert Ilif...
In 1691, a peasant in Livonia - on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea - announced before a startled district court that he was a werewolf. Yet far from being in league with the Devil, “Old Thiess” insisted he was one of the “hounds of God,” fierce guardians who battled sorcerers, witches, and ev...
In the last years of Elizabeth I’s reign, many of the preoccupations of earlier decades had been abated. Mary, Queen of Scots had finally been executed in 1587; the Spanish Armada was defeated the following year; and the question of the Queen marrying had been shelved. And yet these were years of...
All this month on Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb has been talking to her guests about Queenship. But the focus has inevitably been on European Queens. Yet, if there is some flexibility about the word “Queen”, then the role of a female monarch as a consort or a ruler is actually ...
