Not Just the Tudors

To mark Mental Health Awareness Week, Not Just the Tudors casts a 21st century eye over "one of the most perplexing, elusive, attractive, and afflicting diseases of the Renaissance" - melancholy - and...

9 Maj 202232min

There’s not an infinite number of ways that humans can act on sexual desire. Human bodies haven’t changed, but the cultural landscape around sex has. What people believed about it, the morality surrou...

5 Maj 202243min

Sir Walter Raleigh remains one of the enduring names from the Elizabethan era. He was a true Renaissance man - a statesman, soldier, writer, explorer and a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I. In 1594, Ral...

2 Maj 202226min

The Ottoman Sultan Suleyman I - known as "Suleyman the Magnificent" in the West - was the most feared and powerful man of the sixteenth century. His journey to power was built on brutal choices and in...

28 Apr 202238min

Many of the private and public dramas in the life of Henry VIII took place at Hampton Court Palace. Begun in 1514 for Cardinal Wolsey, Hampton Court became one of Henry VIII's favourite residences. Se...

25 Apr 202228min

In 1667 - 355 years ago this month - a young London publisher called Samuel Simmons printed a very important book - John Milton's Paradise Lost. Milton had come to the fore in radical politics and, fo...

21 Apr 202229min

The recently released film Lapwing is set during the Tudor period, one year after the Egyptian Act of 1554 effectively criminalised Romani people and others - generically labelled "Egyptians" - and th...

18 Apr 202247min

The Dudleys were the most brilliant, bold and manipulative of power-hungry Tudor families. Every Tudor monarch made their name either with a Dudley at their side - or by crushing one beneath their fee...

14 Apr 202241min