Not Just the Tudors

This episode solves the 400-year old mystery of a previously unknown portrait of a young woman, dressed to look just like Queen Elizabeth herself. When Emma Rutherford - the country's leading expert i...

Six wives - six lives that we think we know everything about. But beyond their mostly doomed marriages to Henry VIII and, in most cases, tragic ends, here were six women who shaped history in their ow...

The mid-15th to mid-16th centuries in Europe was an era of political, social, and religious unrest, when the Roman Catholic Church was being questioned by those who sought a more direct connection wit...

If you think that the female spy is a 20th century phenomenon - be it Mata Hari, Mrs Zigzag or Eve Polastri - think again!  Accounts of numerous 17th century 'she-intelligencers' have lain undiscovere...

Six wives - six lives that we think we know everything about.  But beyond their mostly doomed marriages to Henry VIII and, in most cases, tragic ends, here were six women who shaped history in their o...

Margaret Tudor - daughter of King Henry VII, sister to Henry VIII - was married at 13 to James IV of Scotland, learning the skills of statecraft that would enable her to survive his early death and to...

The acclaimed TV series Shogun, now screening on Disney+, is based on true events. Its main character John Blackthorne is modelled on William Adams, the English pilot of a Dutch ship that arrived on J...

Fans of historical fiction and crime novels have been saddened to learn of the recent death of the award-winning, best-selling author C.J. Sansom, just days before the release of Shardlake - the TV se...

**This episode contains conversation about sexual behaviour** In early modern Europe, acting upon same-sex desires was forbidden. We only know of many of the cases because of records of criminal tria...

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