Not Just the Tudors

The true crime genre - stories of actual murders and other crimes that are then fictionalised - is not a new phenomenon. More than four centuries ago, a series of plays based on real life cases appeared on the London stage. It was a short-lived craze generated by the insatiable early modern appetite for the "three Ms" - melodrama, moralizing and misogyny.  In this edition of Not Jus...

On 9 March 1566, David Rizzio - close friend and private secretary to Mary, Queen of Scots - was stabbed dozens of times in front of the pregnant Queen at the instigation of her husband, Lord Darnley in an apparent bid to destroy both her and her unborn heir so that Darnley himself could rule Scotland. He had also made a bargain with his allies in return for restoring their lands and titles. In th...

Our image of the Tudor era remains overwhelmingly white. But the black presence in England was much greater than has previously been recognised, and Tudor conceptions of race were far more complex than we have been led to believe.   In this edition of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. Onyeka Nubia whose original research shows that Tudors from many walks of l...

Was Henry VIII as all-powerful and tyrannical as we have come to believe? Is the scheming of Thomas Cromwell portrayed in Wolf Hall close to the truth? What were the roles of the clergy, or parliament, or the land-owning gentry, in supporting or influencing the sweeping changes that rocked England during the period? In this edition of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to...

Early in the morning of Sunday 13 November 1536, a London merchant named Robert Pakington was shot dead crossing Cheapside as he walked to church. It was the first gun crime in London's history. But who pulled the trigger? In a time of religious turmoil, was Pakington's murder perhaps provoked by his outspoken criticism of the clergy? In this edition of Not Just the Tudors , Profess...

Since its first outing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2017, the stage musical Six has become a worldwide theatre sensation. In it, the six wives of Henry VIII are re-imagined as a girl band, competing to decide who will lead the group based on how much they suffered while married to Henry. Six was created by two Cambridge undergrads, Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, while they were studying for the...

In 1547, the 14-year-old future Queen Elizabeth I is living with her step-mother Queen Catherine Parr and her new husband Thomas Seymour, uncle to Elizabeth's half-brother King Edward VI. But when Seymour begins an overt flirtation with Elizabeth, she is sent away by Catherine. Later, when Seymour is arrested for treason, Elizabeth and Seymour's relationship comes under close scrutiny. In thi...

Oliver Cromwell - the only commoner to have become Britain's head of state - has puzzled biographers for centuries. He was a complex character, courageous but at the same time devious and self-serving. But the Cromwell who comes through in his own speeches and writings does not give us the full picture.   In this edition of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Profe...

In 1682, three impoverished women from Bideford in Devon were hanged, becoming the last people to be executed for witchcraft in England. The evidence against them was flimsy and their conviction was secured against a background of a baying mob mentality. Yet their story has endured, and their names were chanted as recently as the 1980s, as both inspiration and incantation, by women peace acti...

In the 17th century, England was known as "Devil-Land" - a diabolical country torn apart by seditious rebellion, religious extremism and royal collapse. Dr. Clare Jackson has written a dazzling, original account of English history's most turbulent and radical era telling the story of a nation in a state of near continual crisis.   Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. Jackson about En...

The Ottoman Empire has long been seen as the Islamic-Asian opposite of the Christian-European West. But the reality was very different: the Ottomans played an integral role in European history. Their multiethnic, multilingual, and multi-religious domain reached deep into the heart of the continent, connecting the East and West as never before.   In this edition of Not Just the Tudor...

In an age before newspapers and mass media, how did the general public keep abreast of what was going on? How did they find out about the seismic changes going on at court, and in the religious life of the country?   In this edition of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. Jenni Hyde, whose extensive research into the early modern period proves that the news...

In the Vatican Library, there survive 17 highly personal love letters, written in King Henry VIII's own hand to Anne Boleyn between 1527 and 1528. How the letters got there no one exactly knows - they were probably stolen from Anne to be used as evidence in Henry's divorce trial with Catherine of Aragon.  In the second of her Explainer podcasts, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb explores these...

On a remote Massachusetts plantation in 1651, an unpopular local brickmaker was blamed for a wave of animal ailments, children dying and vanishing property. The argumentative Hugh Parsons was accused of being a vengeful witch.   In this edition of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Professor Malcolm Gaskill about his research into this dark, real-life folktal...

The royal wedding of Marguerite de Valois and Henri de Navarre on 18 August 1572, was designed to reconcile France’s Catholics and Protestants - or Huguenots. But six days later, the execution of Protestant leaders led to a massacre by Catholics of thousands more Protestants in Paris and across France.  In this edition of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by Dr. Soph...

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. But Philip's character and central role in the English monarchy was forever blackened by anti-Catholic versions of Tudor history.  In this edition of...

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 - was the most influential person in her life. Witness at an early age to the expulsion of Jews, the d...

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 them, storming and taking the city of Norwich - an act which prompted a brutal response from the full mi...

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-view was shattered by revolutionary new ideas - that consenting adults have the freedom to do what they li...

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 Lipscomb talks to author and historian Nicola Tallis who reveals the moving, human story of an intellig...

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 this edition of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Professor Tom Betteri...

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 Just the Tudors , Suzannah Lipscomb talks gunpowder, treason and plot with historian and broadcaster...

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-part Not Just the Tudors special, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb further explores Holbein's fascinating...

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 religious artist. In this first of a two-part Not Just the Tudors special exploring the life and work of this m...

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 everything there is to know about what Tudor women wore, and why. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for m...