Not Just the Tudors

In 1671, an Anglo-Irish officer, the self-styled Colonel Blood attempted to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London. The thwarted crime brought him face-to-face with King Charles II. This incredible story is the subject of a riotous new stage comedy, The Crown Jewels , starring Al Murray and Mel Giedroyc. In this episode of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb finds...

Did King James VI of Scotland plot to assassinate Elizabeth I? Did she name him as her successor? For centuries, dozens of pasted-over passages in the original manuscript of William Camden’s  Annals  have been inaccessible. But now, technology has made them visible for the first time, offering new insights into the political machinations of Elizabeth’s court. In this episode of Not Just...

Best known for St. Paul’s Cathedral, Christopher Wren was the greatest architect Britain has ever known. But he was so much more: he applied his mind to astronomy, meteorology and anatomy. How did he achieve so much while running the nation's biggest architectural office with all its petty jealousies and political challenges?  In this episode of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipsco...

Books belonging to Henry VIII, Richard III, Mary I and Edward VI are among the treasures in the historic library of the Archbishops of Canterbury, one of the oldest public libraries in England.  In this episode of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb takes a tour of just a few items from Lambeth Palace Library’s priceless collection with the librarian archivist Giles Mandelbrote....

Seymour, Dudley and Parr are all well-known Tudor names. But often, behind the more famous men in those families, there were women who had a much greater influence than has previously been acknowledged. In this episode of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by historian and researcher Sylvia Barbara Soberton to discover more about three such women - Ann Seymour, Jane D...

How did an enslaved East African man become Japan’s first foreign samurai, and the only ever samurai of African descent? How did Yasuke catch the attention of Japan’s most powerful warlord Oda Nobunaga, to become the most unlikely of national heroes? In this episode of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to author Craig Shreve who, in his new novel The African Samurai: The incr...

Artemisia Gentileschi was the most celebrated female painter of the 17th century, as famous in her lifetime as Reubens or Van Dyke. But the events of her life were as savage as the events depicted in her paintings. In this episode of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Elizabeth Freemantle, whose new novel Disobedient imagines Gentileschi’s life and the pivotal events t...

How meaningful can a gift - especially of a book - be? In the fickle world of the Tudor court, the strategic gifting of books was a common practice, bound up in relationships of power, politics and protest. A new exhibition exploring this subject at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, includes a stunning book made by a young Elizabeth I which she gave to Katherine Parr as a New Year’s gift in 1544.&nbsp...

In the sixteenth century, religious beliefs underwent a dramatic change. As differences between the late medieval Roman Catholic Church and the nature of Luther's Protestantism spread across Western Europe, where you stood on points of theology could literally mean life or death. For example, what did you have to do to attain salvation? And what happened in the most holy moment of a church service...

The name Ivan the Terrible is synonymous with brutality and ruthlessness. While Western scholars insist that the first crowned Tsar of all Russia did create a policy of mass repression and execution, others claim Ivan’s name has been tarnished by Western travellers and writers. How then should his complex and fascinating personality be understood?   In this episode of Not Just...

From the mid-15th century to the mid-16th century, there were 10 Queens Consort of England, from Margaret of Anjou to Katherine Parr. For each of these Queens, jewellery was a way she could signify her status and her legitimacy, display familial and cultural ties, and chart life events - from courtship and marriage, through motherhood, to death.  In this episode of Not Just the Tudors , Profe...

As Queen Elizabeth I lays dying, King James VI of Scotland is waiting to accede to the throne of England. But who will thrive and who will fall under the new King? Will it be the scholar Francis Bacon, whose brilliant mind is the envy of the court? Or his hated rival Edward Cook, the greatest lawyer of his generation? In this episode of Not Just the Tudors — recorded at the Hay Festival of Literat...

In the summer of 1579, Francis Drake had to land in a ‘fair and good bay’ on the western coast of the New World when his ship - The Golden Hind - needed repairs. A sign was put up, naming it Nova Albion (‘New England’) for Queen Elizabeth I. But the question of exactly where Drake landed has continued to vex historians to this day. In this episode of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipsco...

What do you get when you bring together five top historians to debate depictions of Thomas More on film and TV? History with the gloves off - our third special episode of Not Just the Tudors Lates!  This time, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb takes as her starting point the life of the scholar who wrote Utopia , the Lord Chancellor who became a Roman Catholic martyr and saint. Suzannah is joined a...

The most admired and influential composer during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I, William Byrd died exactly 400 years ago on 4 July 1623. Byrd’s music ranks among the most unique and inspired works of the late Renaissance. Remarkably, Byrd was a practicing Catholic in Anglican England who persistently faced threats of religious persecution. In this edition of Not Just the Tud...

When we think of Shakespeare, we mostly think of language. But what about gesture and other forms of nonverbal communication - from thumb-biting in Romeo and Juliet to Pistol giving “the fig of Spain” in Henry V? Do gestures say something specific about the gendering of guilt and shame? In this episode of Not Just the Tudors , rounding up her series for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s First...

Today we think of fairies on the stage and in stories as often cute, ultra-feminine and unthreatening. But in Early Modern literature, fairies were supernatural often gender-fluid beings - just think of Ariel in The Tempest . In this special episode of Not Just the Tudors for Pride Month, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb finds out more from Dr. Ezra Horbury, lecturer in Renaissance literature at the Un...

In this third special episode of Not Just the Tudors celebrating the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb investigates the nature of theatre-going in Elizabethan London with Dr. Eoin Price. How were theatres built? What was the experience for the audience? Who went to plays and how did they choose what plays to see, in which theatre? D...

Every spring and summer of her 44 year reign, Queen Elizabeth I insisted that her court go "on progress" — royal visits to towns and aristocratic homes. These trips provided the only direct contact most people had with their monarch. In this episode of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb meets Dr. Mary Hill Cole, whose research examines the effects of these visits on the Queen's hous...

Experts at Hever Castle - the childhood home of Anne Boleyn - have made an extraordinary discovery. They’ve established that an ornate 1527 prayer book — kept in a Cambridge library for more than 350 years — belonged to Henry VIII’s Chief Minister Thomas Cromwell and appears in Holbein’s portrait of him. Identical books were also owned by Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. In today’s episode of...

Shakespeare’s First Folio — the first book to contain 36 of his plays, 18 of which had not been in print before — was published in 1623. In the second of her special series marking its 400th anniversary, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb delves into the political and social story behind its printing. It's a story of royal families, foreign affairs, industry, commerce and religion. Suzannah’s guest...

In 1567, a sailor named David Ingram sailed from Plymouth with 400 others on a slaving expedition. The ensuing events read like a fantastic adventure story: shipwrecked in a hurricane off Mexico, a battle with - and imprisonment by - the Spanish, escape and a 3000 mile trek to Canada. Ingram was one of only three who survived to tell the tale. And what a tale he told. For four centuries, it has be...

Three powerful Renaissance queens all lived together at the French court for many years. They were bound together through blood and marriage, alliance and friendship — bonds that were tested when they were forced to scatter to different kingdoms.  In this episode of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Leah Redmond Chang — author of Young Queens: The gripping, inter...

Four hundred years ago in 1623, the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays was printed. Known as the First Folio, the book was integral to establishing Shakespeare's posthumous reputation just seven years after his death. In the first of four special episodes of Not Just the Tudors celebrating this anniversary, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Professor Emma Smith about the story behin...

Why do we call the Great Fire of London in 1666 “great”? Was it because of the significant challenge it posed to authorities and residents as they sought to bring it under control? Was it because of the extent of its devastation? Or was it because it occurred during an eventful couple of years where plague and war also threatened lives? In this episode of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah L...