Henry VIII's Reign of Terror
**Contains graphic description of execution ** What happened when one monarch's personal obsession dismantled an entire international order?...
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Not Just the Tudors
Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks about everything from the Aztecs to witches, Velázquez to Shakespeare, Mughal India to the Mayflower. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definit...
Episodes
20 of 562 episodesQuest for an Heir: Henry VIII, Aragon and Boleyn
In the 1520s, a dynastic crisis loomed behind the brilliance of Henry VIII's court. Desperate for a male heir after Catherine of Aragon's st...
Henry VIII: From Cradle to Crown
How did a dazzling young Tudor prince become one of history's most notorious kings? How much of Henry VIII’s later tyranny was shaped by the...
How to Survive as a Tudor Peasant
What was everyday life like for an ordinary person in Tudor times? How did dramatic changes in population, climate, disease and the economy...
Young Elizabeth I: Princess & Prisoner
How did a child written off by the Tudor court rise to become one of England's most iconic monarchs? Before she became queen, Elizabeth Tudo...
Captain Cook: The Voyage that Changed the World
How did Captain James Cook's scientific voyage of 1768 become a mission for the British empire? While expanding knowledge of Pacific geograp...
Manhattan’s Most Notorious Couple
Who were the scandalous, defiant couple on the margins of Dutch society who became part of the founding story of New York? Professor Suzanna...
James V: Scotland's Ambitious Renaissance King
Was James V of Scotland a beleaguered child king or a brilliant Renaissance ruler who mastered the performance of power? Crowned before his...
True Crime: Mass Murderering Artist Cellini
How did a murderous, swaggering, wildly unreliable goldsmith become one of the most celebrated artists of the 16th century? Does genius excu...
C.S. Lewis & Narnia: Renaissance Origins
Why does C.S. Lewis's Narnia - with its images of winter, sacrifice, kingship and renewal - continue to resonate with generations of readers...
The Star Chamber: Murder, Witch & Libel Trials
What really happened inside England’s most feared court? Was the Star Chamber a sinister instrument of royal tyranny, or a vital route to ju...
William Cecil: The Power Behind Elizabeth I
Who really ruled Elizabethan England? For almost four decades, William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, guided Queen Elizabeth I through religious...
Witnesses to the French Revolution
What was the French Revolution like for those who lived through it? What can private journals reveal that speeches, pamphlets and official r...
New Discovery: Who Really Wrote Elizabeth I's Letters?
Was Elizabeth I really as angry and bad tempered as history has always claimed? How did some of her most secret state letters come to be pen...
Robespierre & Revolutionary Terror
How did the French Revolution, built on liberty, become ruled by fear? And how did Robespierre - the man who had sent kings, nobles and prie...
How Protestants Justified Slavery
Was the Protestant Reformation ever truly global? How did radical theology, empire, slavery and missionary ambition collide across the early...
French Revolution: Storming of the Bastille
What drove a hungry city to storm a fortress? How did the fall of the Bastille become the defining symbol of the French Revolution? In this...
True Crime: Murder & the Popish Plot
Was a London magistrate, found dead in a ditch in 1678, the victim of a Catholic conspiracy, political convenience, or secrets too dangerous...
Who Lit the French Revolution?
How did a kingdom of palaces, privilege and powdered wigs collapse into revolution? What turned hunger into uprising? In this first episode...
Bess of Hardwick: Elizabethan England's Richest Woman
How did a Derbyshire gentlewoman become England’s richest woman after Elizabeth I? Why does she still fascinate us as her 500th anniversary...