Not Just the Tudors

**This episode contains brief descriptions of tortures** Between 1570 and 1630 there was intense persecution as thousands of people were accused of being witches in Lorraine, a small duchy on the bord...

We probably think that the only artists working in the Tudor court were men, like Holbein and Hilliard. But new research is revealing that women were painting the Tudors too, and they were probably mo...

Long before witch trials, magic was the domain of ‘cunning folk’ who were part of the fabric of medieval and early modern life. Their charms, filters and spells - for personal advancement, aiding fert...

Leonardo da Vinci was a man like no other. A restless visionary and polymath, his paintings are some of the best known of all works of art. To talk about Leonardo, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joine...

In the aftermath of the Civil War, a remote corner of Essex witnessed the most brutally devastating witch-hunt in English history. A dangerous maverick Matthew Hopkins, 'the Witchfinder General', hunt...

The names that spring first to mind in the Reformation of Christianity tend always to be male. But women were central to these extraordinary transformations in religious life in Europe and around the...

Join Professor Suzannah Lipscomb and Professor Ronald Hutton as they explore the evolving definitions of witches, the global spread of witch beliefs, and their impact during the 16th and 17th century ...

A pyrotechnic dragon roared flames into the river Thames during the coronation week of Elizabeth of York in 1487. These explosive displays were employed as a sign of might and majesty throughout the r...

In 1609, some 80 people were executed for witchcraft in France's Basque region. It inspired a final push to eradicate witches by the Spanish Inquisition across the border. One of the judges, Pierre ...

In the 1640s, Black communities existed in London and in most of England's port cities, communities from which men would fight and die throughout the English Civil War. There's still little evidence o...