The First Gun Crime in London
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 w...
25 Nov 202125min
Henry VIII's Wives on Stage: Six - The Musical
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, comp...
22 Nov 202132min
Did Thomas Seymour Groom Elizabeth Tudor?
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 Sey...
18 Nov 202149min
Oliver Cromwell
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...
15 Nov 202146min
The Last Witches in England
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 s...
11 Nov 202156min
England: Devil-Land 1588-1688
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, origi...
8 Nov 202137min
Ottoman Empire in the Renaissance
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 ...
4 Nov 202144min
Singing the News in Tudor England
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 o...
1 Nov 202158min
