Dürer: The Great Renaissance Artist
Albrecht Dürer was the greatest German artist to come out of the Renaissance, whose high quality woodcuts revolutionised the potential of the medium. A spectacular exhibition at the National Gallery i...
13 Dec 202138min
True Crime on the Elizabethan Stage
The true crime genre - stories of actual murders and other crimes that are then fictionalised - is not a new phenomenon. More than four centuries ago, a series of plays based on real life cases appear...
9 Dec 202141min
The Murder of Rizzio, Mary Queen of Scots' Favourite
On 9 March 1566, David Rizzio - close friend and private secretary to Mary, Queen of Scots - was stabbed dozens of times in front of the pregnant Queen at the instigation of her husband, Lord Darnley ...
6 Dec 202134min
Black Tudors
Our image of the Tudor era remains overwhelmingly white. But the black presence in England was much greater than has previously been recognised, and Tudor conceptions of race were far more complex tha...
2 Dec 202149min
How Powerful was Henry VIII?
Was Henry VIII as all-powerful and tyrannical as we have come to believe? Is the scheming of Thomas Cromwell portrayed in Wolf Hall close to the truth? What were the roles of the clergy, or parliament...
29 Nov 202155min
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
