Jane Seymour: Henry VIII’s Third Queen
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...
7 Mar 202434min
Adventures of a Mughal Princess
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:...
4 Mar 202438min
Origins of Fairy Tales
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...
29 Feb 202429min
Science vs. Witchcraft: The Kepler Trial
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 d...
26 Feb 202436min
Ghosts & Guardian Angels
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...
22 Feb 202441min
The Rise and Fall of Britain's Islands
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 esta...
19 Feb 202434min
Origins of the Condom
The first surviving mention of condoms dates from the mid-16th century, in the writings of an Italian anatomist better known for the discovery of the fallopian tubes. Born out of a medical need to pre...
15 Feb 202428min
Fairies in the Early Modern Era
In the early modern period, belief in fairies was quite commonplace. But put all thoughts of Tinkerbell aside! These fairies were altogether more dangerous beings - troublemakers, child-snatchers, se...
12 Feb 202441min
