Not Just the Tudors

Exactly 400 years ago, the Dutch West India Company built Fort Amsterdam on the southern tip of Manhattan island, a beacon of power and resilience against threats from Europeans and Indigenous America...

In 1711, a wave of terror gripped the Islandmagee peninsula in County Antrim. First there was the haunting and supernatural murder of a local clergyman's wife. Then 18-year-old Mary Dunbar suffered vi...

Passion, scandal, and power collided in the tumultuous relationship between Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley. Rumours of secret trysts between them set the court ablaze, but their love was doomed from t...

The brief life of William Shakespeare's son Hamnet is now quite well known, thanks to Maggie O'Farrell's novel, but Hamnet also had a twin sister Judith, who outlived her brother by many decades. Now ...

What happens when a small island faces the might of the Ottoman Empire? In 1565, Malta was the setting for a brutal clash between the forces of the Ottoman Empire and the defiant Knights of the Order ...

Professor Suzannah Lipscomb delves into the world of Stuart-era recipe books, in which medicine, cookery and women's roles combine in fascinating ways. She discovers how these volumes were far more th...

Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake 425 years ago this month. His crime? Radical thinking which clashed with the ideas of the Roman Catholic church. But his extraordinarily colourful life, ideas...

The German Peasants' War - which happened exactly 500 years ago - saw peasants across Germany, Switzerland and Austria rise up against oppressive lords in a bid for freedom and social reform.  This wa...

The opulent halls of 17th and 18th-century Versailles were not just filled with dazzlingly dressed courtiers and royal intrigue. They also positively buzzed with scientific discovery and innovation, m...

How did a lowly orange seller become the most famous actress of her time and mistress of King Charles II? In 1660, King Charles II ruled that female stage roles must be played by women, leading to the...