Not Just the Tudors

Fans of historical fiction and crime novels have been saddened to learn of the recent death of the award-winning, best-selling author C.J. Sansom, just days before the release of Shardlake - the TV series based on his Tudor barrister detective novels. In this episode of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb pays tribute to a fine author, and a fine fictional creation with the writer an...

**This episode contains conversation about sexual behaviour** In early modern Europe, acting upon same-sex desires was forbidden. We only know of many of the cases because of records of criminal trials. But the evidence of the past does not suggest that we can easily find a straightforward match for modern concepts of homosexuality. In this episode of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah...

Sir Walter Raleigh remains one of the most famous men of the Elizabethan era. He was a true Renaissance man - a statesman, soldier, writer, explorer and a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I.  In 1594, Raleigh heard about the legendary golden city of El Dorado and, the following year, explored what is now Guyana and eastern Venezuela in search of it.  In his account of the expedition, Ra...

In 1603, Queen Elizabeth I died and King James VI of Scotland, became King James I of England.  Elizabeth was a hard act to follow for the Scottish newcomer who faced a host of problems in his first years as king: not only the legacy of his predecessor but also unrest in Ireland, serious questions about his legitimacy on the English throne, and even plots to remove him.  In this episode...

In the 16th and 17th centuries, sailing was a tool of warfare and empire, of conquest and discovery, of trade and travel. But vessels were often lost or wrecked in heavy storms or on unfamiliar routes, through attack and piracy. Many such shipwrecks are still being found.  In this episode of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. David Gibbins, maritime archa...

The traditional view of the birth of modern science places it firmly in the 17th century with such huge names as Bacon, Descartes, Newton, and Galileo.  But a century earlier there were others - whose names are not so well-known to us - who paved the way for later scientific breakthroughs.  Patrons and particular places in northern Europe developed new technology and encouraged collabora...

In the 16th century, spices drove the world economy, creating riches on an unprecedented scale. Spanish and Portuguese explorers competed to find the elusive source of cloves and nutmeg, and when Portugal reached the spice islands of the Moluccas, it set in motion a fierce competition for control.   In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Roger Crowle...

What do we know about what Elizabeth I actually looked like? How was her appearance altered through the use of cosmetics? Portraits suggest that makeup was used to lightly accentuate lips and cheeks, alongside a sheer wash of white base on her skin. What products would she have typically used and how were they made?  In this edition of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is...

**WARNING: This episode contains themes that some listeners might find distressing and commonly-used historic terminology that does not reflect our own thoughts ** In May 1680, England become obsessed with a pair of conjoined twins. At just two weeks old, Priscilla and Aquila Herring were kidnapped from their home in Somerset to be put on show for money. A fortnight later they were dead, and a leg...

The major new TV series,  Mary & George tells   the scandalous story of George Villiers, who rose - thanks to his mother Mary’s machinations - from minor gentry to enrapture King James VI & I, Britain’s first Stuart king. For a decade, George Villiers was at James’s side – at court, on state occasions and in bed, right up to James’s death in March 1625. In this episode of Not Just t...

In the 16th century, Erasmus of Rotterdam was about as famous as anybody could be, one of the greatest intellectuals of his age. To Martin Luther's mind, though, Erasmus's radical religious vision did not go far enough. To Roman Catholic scholars, Erasmus was heretical.  In this episode of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by Professor William Barker, to find out mor...

At the end of the French Wars of Religion, a widow Renée Chevalier instigated the prosecution of a military captain who had committed multiple acts of rape, homicide and theft against the villagers who lived around her.  But how could Chevalier win her case when King Henri IV's Edict of Nantes ordered that the recent troubles should be forgotten as 'things that had never been'? In this episod...

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 the world today.  In this edition of Not Just the Tudors , first released in July 2021, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to renowned Luther biographer Professor Lyndal Roper to explore the man behind the carefully crafted image - misogynistic,...

Today surgery is one of the most important sectors in the medical field. But what was surgery like for people in the 16th and 17th centuries, before anaesthetic and sophisticated technology? How were surgeons trained? What tools did they use? And what was the rate of survival?  In this episode of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb discovers more from historian and retired...

Essential to any history of Venice during its glory days is the story of its Jewish population. Venice gave the world the word ghetto . Astonishingly, the ghetto prison turned out to be as remarkable a place as the city of Venice itself, as a literary, cultural and interfaith revival flourished.  In this episode of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Harry Freedman. His...

For every Tudor Queen, their ladies-in-waiting were their confidantes, chaperones and intimate witnesses to their lives. These women were high born, even if they performed menial tasks, and many of them were educated. As King Henry VIII changed wives - and the very fabric of the country's structure - these women had to make choices about loyalty that simply didn't exist before. In this episode of...

Diaries written by gentlewomen in the mid-16th century are hard to find. Yet, they lived through an age of upheaval as old ways were effaced in preference for the new.   In this episode of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb meets award-winning author Francesca Kay. In her new novel The Book of Days , she has imagined herself into the story of a gentlewoman living in the 15...

In the mid-17th century, King Charles I of England was put on trial for treason against the sovereign state. Such a process involved a singular determination by Parliament to find a way, through due legal process, to try the one they saw as a man of blood, to ensure that he paid the price for his faults and failings, but not through extrajudicial summary justice. To understand how such a thing cam...

After the Restoration of the Monarchy, the upper classes took their cues from court life - its entertainments, costumes, food and leisure pursuits. The Stuart-era aristocracy were cultured, political, well educated, immoderate yet religious. So how did devotion and piety coexist with a lifestyle dominated by excess?  In this episode of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb fi...

Jane Seymour is a paradox. Of Henry VIII’s six wives, she is the one about whom we know perhaps the least. She was the most lowly of the queens, but she had royal blood. She's often described as plain and mousy and lacking opinions, but when we do see her in the sources, she tends to be doing something that shows agency, while wearing some very flashy clothes indeed. So what can we make of Jane Se...

In the British Library, there is a manuscript copy of the memoir of Princess Gulbadan, the only surviving female-authored memoir from the Mughal Empire. In it, Gulbadan tells her extraordinary story: from growing up in a multi-cultural society, via life in a walled harem, to an unprecedented women's pilgrimage to Mecca, complete with dramatic shipwreck in the Red Sea.   In this episode of Not...

Fairy tales exist everywhere and in every time. Through centuries of oral tradition and the invention of print and later advances in television and film, fairy tales have altered and shaped themselves in reflection of changing cultural norms.  In this episode of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb goes back to the 16th and 17th centuries and to the first time that fairy tal...

Astronomer Johannes Kepler was an important and admired figure in the scientific revolution of the early 17th century. But when his widowed mother was accused of witchcraft, the scientist remarkably defended her, in a trial that lasted six years. In this episode of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to author Ulinka Rublack who has pieced together this extraordinary true story...

In Elizabethan and Stuart England, ghosts weren't supposed to exist. Protestant preachers and writers had banished them - but people continued to see them. So how did our early modern forebears reckon with ghosts and their heavily counterpart, angels? In this episode of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb finds out from Professor Peter Marshall, author of several books on ghosts...

How did Britain's islands become woven into our collective cultural psyche? Traversing Irish poetry, Renaissance drama and Restoration utopias, author Alice Albinia’s research has boldly upturned established truths about Britain, paying homage to the islands' beauty, independence and their suppressed or forgotten histories - including of women rulers. In this episode of Not Just the Tudors , Alice...