Not Just the Tudors

Henry VIII was termed "by the Grace of God, King of England, France and Ireland.” Ireland was England’s oldest colony. But what bloody events and brutal actions led to the English conquest of Irelan...

1 Feb 202442min

History books rarely make much reference to the impact of climate and the natural environment on people, and vice versa. Yet volcanic eruptions and storms, droughts and cyclical pressures have shaped...

29 Jan 202441min

Reginald Pole has been styled as both the nemesis of Henry VIII and as Mary I's bloody accomplice. Pole was related to the English royal family through the Plantagenets and was himself implicated in a...

25 Jan 202446min

The public fascination with true crime is nothing new. Four centuries ago, the sensational story of the death in the Tower of London of Thomas Overbury, a lawyer in the court of King James I, led to a...

22 Jan 202444min

In 1621 the Virginia Company of London put out a call for young, handsome and honestly educated women to become wives for the planters in its new colony in Jamestown. Hopeful husbands were supposed to...

18 Jan 202434min

Girolamo Savonarola was a late 15th century Dominican friar who rose to become a preacher, prophet, and politician. He took on the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church and despotic rulers including...

15 Jan 202432min

Life in Tudor England was risky. In addition to the outbreaks of plague, the threat of poverty and the dangers of childbirth, there were social risks - of not fitting in, of social death. How was a pe...

11 Jan 202435min

For anyone studying the politics of the 1570s-80s, it would be hard to avoid Elizabeth I’s ‘spymaster’ Sir Francis Walsingham, who seemingly rose from nowhere to become one of the most important men o...

7 Jan 202436min