For every Tudor Queen, their ladies-in-waiting were their confidantes, chaperones and intimate witnesses to their lives. These women were high born, even if they performed menial tasks, and many of them were educated. As King Henry VIII changed wives - and the very fabric of the country's structure - these women had to make choices about loyalty that simply didn't exist before.

In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb welcomes Dr. Nicola Clark, whose new book The Waiting Game, tells the untold story of the women who served the Tudor Queens.

This episode was edited by Ella Blaxill and produced by Rob Weinberg.

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Diaries written by gentlewomen in the mid-16th century are hard to find. Yet, they lived through an age of upheaval as old ways were effaced in preference for the new.

In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb meets award-winning author Francesca Kay. In her new novel The Book of Days, she has imagined herself into the story of a gentlewoman living in the 1540s, writing her book of days, and it is spellbinding.

This episode was edited by Ella Blaxill and produced by Rob Weinberg.

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In the mid-17th century, King Charles I of England was put on trial for treason against the sovereign state. Such a process involved a singular determination by Parliament to find a way, through due legal process, to try the one they saw as a man of blood, to ensure that he paid the price for his faults and failings, but not through extrajudicial summary justice.

To understand how such a thing came about, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb speaks in this episode of Not Just the Tudors to Professor Edward Vallance, who has deeply researched King Charles I's trial. 

This episode was produced by Rob Weinberg.

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After the Restoration of the Monarchy, the upper classes took their cues from court life - its entertainments, costumes, food and leisure pursuits. The Stuart-era aristocracy were cultured, political, well educated, immoderate yet religious. So how did devotion and piety coexist with a lifestyle dominated by excess? 

In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb finds out from Ben Norman, historian and author of Pomp and Piety: Everyday Life of the Aristocracy in Stuart England.

This episode was produced by Rob Weinberg.

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Jane Seymour is a paradox. Of Henry VIII’s six wives, she is the one about whom we know perhaps the least. She was the most lowly of the queens, but she had royal blood. She's often described as plain and mousy and lacking opinions, but when we do see her in the sources, she tends to be doing something that shows agency, while wearing some very flashy clothes indeed. So what can we make of Jane Seymour?

In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. Elizabeth Norton, author of a 2009 book about Jane Seymour and a forthcoming scholarly biography.

This episode was produced by Rob Weinberg.

Opening music: The Death of Queen Jane, performed by Karine Polwart, used with kind permission of the artist and Hudson Records.

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In the British Library, there is a manuscript copy of the memoir of Princess Gulbadan, the only surviving female-authored memoir from the Mughal Empire. In it, Gulbadan tells her extraordinary story: from growing up in a multi-cultural society, via life in a walled harem, to an unprecedented women's pilgrimage to Mecca, complete with dramatic shipwreck in the Red Sea.

In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb finds out more from Professor Ruby Lal, whose latest book, Vagabond Princess: The Great Adventures of Gulbadan, examines this largely forgotten manuscript and the life of the remarkable woman who wrote it.

This episode was edited by Ella Blaxill and produced by Rob Weinberg.

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Fairy tales exist everywhere and in every time. Through centuries of oral tradition and the invention of print and later advances in television and film, fairy tales have altered and shaped themselves in reflection of changing cultural norms. 

In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb goes back to the 16th and 17th centuries and to the first time that fairy tales were written down and compiled. She is joined by Nicholas Jubber, author of The Fairy Tellers: A Journey into the Secret History of Fairy Tales.

This episode was produced by Rob Weinberg.

**WARNING: This episode contains some graphic language and descriptions**

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Astronomer Johannes Kepler was an important and admired figure in the scientific revolution of the early 17th century. But when his widowed mother was accused of witchcraft, the scientist remarkably defended her, in a trial that lasted six years.

In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to author Ulinka Rublack who has pieced together this extraordinary true story.

This episode was edited by Ella Blaxill and produced by Rob Weinberg.

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In Elizabethan and Stuart England, ghosts weren't supposed to exist. Protestant preachers and writers had banished them - but people continued to see them. So how did our early modern forebears reckon with ghosts and their heavily counterpart, angels?

In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb finds out from Professor Peter Marshall, author of several books on ghosts, beliefs and the dead in Reformation England.

This episode was edited by Ella Blaxill and produced by Rob Weinberg.

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How did Britain's islands become woven into our collective cultural psyche? Traversing Irish poetry, Renaissance drama and Restoration utopias, author Alice Albinia’s research has boldly upturned established truths about Britain, paying homage to the islands' beauty, independence and their suppressed or forgotten histories - including of women rulers.

In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Alice Albinia talks more about her book The Britannias: An Island Quest with Professor Suzannah Lipscomb. 

This episode was edited by Tomos Delargy and produced by Rob Weinberg.

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