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.
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 Philip was not merely Mary's King Consort. Rather he was King of England, co-ruler with Mary. Philip's character and central role in the English monar...
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 Prince of Wales. Eight years after Arthur's death, she became the first of Henry VIII's six wives. Catalina's mother - Queen Isabella I of Castile - wa...
In 1549, the Tudor establishment was rocked by a series of popular rebellions, born of deep discontent over the enclosure by wealthy landowners of common land, which were essential to ordinary people's livelihoods. In Norfolk, yeoman Robert Kett agreed to the rebels' demands and offered to lead t...
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 neighbours all put huge amounts of energy into catching sexual wrongdoers and seeing them punished. But between 1600 and 1800, this entire world-vie...
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 just 13 tumultuous days before being imprisoned in the Tower, condemned and executed.
In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah ...
Who was Thomas More - Knight, Chancellor and Martyr? His life is paradoxical, with More regarded as both saint and persecutor, Humanist intellectual and bigoted zealot. His religious writings, with their - at times - violent attacks on what he regarded as heresy, have been hotly debated.
In th...
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's break with Rome. It's a story of Holy War, divided loyalties and religious hatred. And it has never been more timely.
In this edition of Not J...
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 Holbein creating the full-length portrait of King Henry VIII that has dominated how we have visualised him ever since.
In this second of a two-pa...
How did Tudor Queens clothe themselves? How did female fashion change over Henry VIII's reign? Did foreign Queens influence English fashion or adopt it? Did women wear underclothes?
In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Professor Maria Hayward about everyth...
Hans Holbein the Younger is celebrated for his hyper-realistic, iconic portraits of Henry VIII, Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, Anne of Cleves, Jane Seymour and an array of Tudor lords and ladies. But beyond these, Holbein was a humanist, satirist, political propagandist, book designer and religiou...
Elizabeth I's excommunication by the Pope in 1570 marked the beginning of an extraordinary - and little talked about - English alignment with Muslim powers that were fighting Catholic Spain in the Mediterranean. This engagement with, and awareness of, Islam found its way into scores of plays, inc...
Making babies was a mysterious process for people in early modern England. Their ideas about conception, pregnancy, and childbirth tell us much about their attitudes towards gender and power at that time.
In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Professor Mary...
The dramas of courtly love have captivated readers and dreamers for centuries. Yet they’re often dismissed as something that existed only in legends of King Arthur and chivalric fantasy.
But in this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Sarah Gristwood tells Professor Suzannah Lipscomb how the Tudors ...
In July 1596, Fynes Moryson - a Lincolnshire gentleman and travel writer - was struck down with grief when his younger brother died as they crossed the desert on their return from Jerusalem. Moryson described his journeys and devastating experiences two decades later in an account titled "Itinera...
Not all suspicions of witchcraft led to a formal accusation, and not all such accusations led to trials and execution. During the entire early modern period, the large, Lutheran duchy of Württemberg in southwestern Germany - where there were some 600 accusations - only 350 went to trial, 197 of w...
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 Henry's need to produce a male successor led to his wanting to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn.
In this first of an occasional ser...
Between February 1534 and June 1535, the German city of Münster was seized and ruled over by a radical group of Protestant Christians called Anabaptists, who believed the Biblical Apocalypse was imminent. Their leader styled himself as a new King Solomon. He took 16 wives and - allegedly - person...
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. While Elizabeth I is often hailed as "Gloriana" - and one of the greatest ever Britons - "Bloody Mary" more often finds her way onto charts of the most evil...
In the cut-throat world of Renaissance Florence, Alessandro - the illegitimate son of a Duke and a mixed-race servant - attempts to reassert the Medicis’ faltering grip on the city state. But after just six years in power, Alessandro is murdered by his cousin while anticipating an adulterous liai...
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 their body hair?
In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb gets the lowdown from Jill Burke - Professor of Renaissance Visual ...
Between 1570 and 1630, there was intense persecution and thousands of executions of suspected witches in Lorraine, a small duchy on the borders of France and the Holy Roman Empire. In some cases, suspicious citizens waited decades to report their neighbours as witches. But why did they take so lo...
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 Church against the threat of Martin Luther. Why did he then break away from Rome and create religious divisions for centuries to come? A new online exh...
For the Tudors and Elizabethans, a beard denoted masculinity while beardlessness indicated boyhood or effeminacy. How a man wore his beard - or not - said a lot about his power and position in society.
In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to theatre historia...
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. Since Victorian times, historians have labelled her as lewd and promiscuous, but there was an altogether more complex young woman behind the rumo...
