Not Just the Tudors

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, including Shakespeare's Othello . In this edition of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb tal...

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 Fissell. She has been delving into a wealth of popular sources - ballads, jokes, witchcraft pamphlets,...

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 Itinerary , at once a personal memoir and a huge manual of travel advice.   In this edition of Not Ju...

The dramas of courtly love have captivated readers and dreamers for centuries. Yet they’re often dismissed as something that existed only in the 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 actually re-enacted the roles of the devoted lovers and capricious mistresses first laid out in the...

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 which ended with burning at the stake. So what does this tell us about how people understood t...

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 series of Explainer podcasts, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb offers everything you ever wanted to know ab...

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 - personally executed those who opposed him.  In this edition of Not Just the Tudors , Professor...

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 and Material Cultures at the University of Edinburgh - on all the tips to become an authentic Rena...

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 women in history. Both childless, Mary is reviled as "barren" while Elizabeth is lauded as t...

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 liaison. In this edition of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Professor Catherine...

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 exhibition - drawn from the colletion of the Society of Antiquaries in London - offers a new per...

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 long to use the law to eliminate the supposedly dangerous figures who lived amongst them? Robin Briggs -...

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 historian Dr. Eleanor Rycroft about her hirsute pursuits, analysing the depiction of beards in portra...

Though she is relatively unknown outside of Mexico, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz - poet, playwright and nun - is an icon and national hero in her homeland. She even features on the 200 peso banknote.  In this edition of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. Amy Fuller Morgan about the real Sor Juana - misrepresented and mythologised as a subversive upstart, even a martyr...

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 rumours. In this edition of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Gareth Russell,...

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 , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to renowned Luther biographer Lyndal Roper to explore the man behind the carefully crafted image - misogynistic, anti-Semitic, occasionally self-doubti...

The relationship between Elizabeth I and Catherine de' Medici - the two most powerful Queens of their time - is one of the most intriguing and captivating stories of the 16th century.  In this edition of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. Estelle Paranque about her new book Blood, Fire and Gold , which explores how these two formidable women wielded and negotiated...

In this edition of Not Just The Tudors , Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Hannah Dawson, editor of The Penguin Book of Feminist Writing who draws upon poems, novels and memoirs to show that even in Tudor times, and earlier, there was not only insight that sexism existed, but women were articulating their struggle against patriarchal oppression. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information...

In the 16th and 17th centuries and beyond, certain sexual acts were made capital crimes in England, France and other countries. The offence of "sodomy" embraced a wide range of acts including rape, child abuse and bestiality.   In this edition of Not Just the Tudors , Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. Tom Hamilton who has deeply researched the subject, shedding light on what the author...

The Story of the Death of Anne Boleyn is a long narrative poem written by the secretary to the French ambassador in London within two weeks of the Queen's execution. It was intended as a diplomatic dispatch, relating the astonishing news - in verse - of her demise, along with that of five alleged lovers.  In this edition of Not Just the Tudors , Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Professor JoAnn Dell...

Dr Tarnya Cooper is the Curatorial and Collections Director at the National Trust. For her recent book, 125 Treasures from the Collections of the National Trust , she and 60 curators brought together the most extraordinary objects that can be found in National Trust properties around the country. In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Tarnya joins Suzannah Lipscomb with her pick of her 12 favouri...

When tobacco arrived in Britain in the 1560s, it was hailed as a "holy herb", a miracle cure to improve health and a catalyst for wit and creativity. The coming of coffee - "black as hell, strong as death, sweet as love" - in the mid-17th century, led to the establishment of coffee houses where debates flourished and innovations were born that helped to shape the modern world. In this edition of N...

Playwright and musician John Heywood was a devout Catholic humanist and biting satirist - married to Sir Thomas Moore's niece - who managed to survive life as a courtier through the Catholic and Protestant regimes of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. In this edition of Not Just the Tudors , Suzannah Lipscomb finds out more about this fascinating figure with Professor Greg Walker, auth...

On 7 June 1520, Henry VIII of England and François I of France met at the Field of Cloth of Gold. For three weeks on English soil in Northern France, the two Kings - and the 12,000 who accompanied them - feasted, jousted, and made merry. This party without parallel was a peace summit between the two countries, arranged by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey.  A new exhibition at Hampton Court, called Gold...

Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by Professor Geoffrey Parker to explore the extraordinary life and career of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1500–1558), who ruled Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and much of Italy and Central and South America, Prof. Parker has examined countless surviving written sources, interrogating every dimension of Charles’s long reign, to produce an epic, detailed and vivid life...