Not Just the Tudors

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 - Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by Professor Joel Harrington to talk about Schmidt and further explore public capital punishment in the 16th century, des...

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 was the real man behind the notoriety? In this episode of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipsco...

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 become Pope? In this episode of  Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to...

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 Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by Dr. Joanne Paul, Jessie Childs, Alex von Tunzelmann and Professor Sa...

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 journey towards securing the crown. In this edition of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lips...

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 death. This shocking case is the subject of a dazzling new novel The Bewitching by author Jill Dawson, Pr...

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 Loveman. Her extensive research offers significant insights into the man, his world and the far-reach...

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 innovative military tactics, and helped to keep Cromwell in power as Lord Protector until his death. In...

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 even Satan to protect the fields and flocks. Not surprisingly, his judges struggled to make sense of the...

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 Dawson, who has closely studied the household accounts of the Willoughby family of Wollaton Hall...

Ruffs, Pipes and Pearls 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 both ways: the Englishmen who settled in Jamestown, Virginia, took with them g...

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, superstition, and witchcraft. In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to...

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 from the start? In this edition of  Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by...

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Professor Alan Downie about Daniel Dafoe, 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, Dafoe survived the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London, traded in hosiery, supported freedom of religion and the press, worked as a...

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 Iliffe about Newton’s remarkable life, his laws of motion and gravity as well as about some of the ide...

Born in 1521, Anne Askew was condemned as a heretic for her radical Protestantism beliefs during the reign of Henry VIII. Tortured and executed after the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1537, she was also one of the earliest known women poets to compose in the English language. Uniquely, her surviving first-person account of her ordeal and her beliefs led her to being proclaimed as a Protest...

Between 1630 and 1631, the city of Florence suffered its last epidemic of plague. Some 12% of the city's population of 75,000 perished. In this edition of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Professor John Henderson, historian of epidemics, about how Florence suffered, fought and survived the impact of plague - and what we might have learned from the approach of the Florenti...

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 extraordinary challenge to crown and country, when the woman at the helm was elderly and apparently in...

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 much more common globally than we might assume. In this episode, Suzannah talks to Dr. Elena Wood...

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 regnant, their daughters Mary I and Elizabeth I respectively. The ritual of coronation was crucial for conferring legitimacy and sanctity.  As part of Not Just the Tudors ’ Queenship month, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. Alice Hunt...

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 fascinating example of early modern female sovereignty, illustrating how benevolence, humility, wifely obedience and piety could be exercised to realise great power and exert great influence. To discuss this Queen by any other name, Professor Suzannah Lips...

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’s less well-known monarchs - Queen Mary II and her sister Queen Anne. Both were highly competent and courageous Queens with fascinating public and private lives, reigning over periods of immense historical and political importance. To discuss them,...

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 fledged monarch. And beneath all of these contracts and customs were real live women, their emotions running high as they left behind their birth families and embarked on an exciting and terrifying journey into a foreign land to marry a stranger. In...

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 October 1650. Christina was one of the most learned women of the 17th century. She never married and after her abdication, she converted to Catholicism and is one of the few women to be buried in the Vatican. She was memorably played by Greta Garbo as a...

Not Just the Tudors ’ special month-long look at Queenship continues with an exploration of the popular perception of those foreign Queens who came to England in the 16th and 17th centuries. Catherine of Aragon, Anne of Cleves, Anne of Denmark, Henrietta Maria and Catherine of Braganza have all become part of our national fabric, and yet when they arrived on English shores to be wed, they were ver...