Hans Holbein the Younger is celebrated for his hyper-realistic, iconic portraits of Henry VIII, Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, Anne of Cleves, Jane Seymour and an array of Tudor lords and ladies. But beyond these, Holbein was a humanist, satirist, political propagandist, book designer and religious artist.

In this first of a two-part Not Just the Tudors special exploring the life and work of this multi-faceted genius, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to three of the world's foremost Holbein scholars - Jeanne Nuechterlein, Franny Moyle and Susan Foister - about the early life of Tudor England's artistic giant. 

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How did Tudor Queens clothe themselves? How did female fashion change over Henry VIII's reign? Did foreign Queens influence English fashion or adopt it? Did women wear underclothes?

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Professor Maria Hayward about everything there is to know about what Tudor women wore, and why.

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Elizabeth I's excommunication by the Pope in 1570 marked the beginning of an extraordinary - and little talked about - English alignment with Muslim powers that were fighting Catholic Spain in the Mediterranean. This engagement with, and awareness of, Islam found its way into scores of plays, including Shakespeare's Othello.

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Professor Jerry Brotton about England's fascinating relations with the Muslim world, which were far more extensive, and often more amicable, than we might think.

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Making babies was a mysterious process for people in early modern England. Their ideas about conception, pregnancy, and childbirth tell us much about their attitudes towards gender and power at that time.

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Professor Mary Fissell. She has been delving into a wealth of popular sources - ballads, jokes, witchcraft pamphlets, Prayer Books and popular medical manuals - to produce the first account of how women's reproductive bodies were understood in the 17th century.

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In July 1596, Fynes Moryson - a Lincolnshire gentleman and travel writer - was struck down with grief when his younger brother died as they crossed the desert on their return from Jerusalem. Moryson described his journeys and devastating experiences two decades later in an account titled Itinerary, at once a personal memoir and a huge manual of travel advice.  

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. Eva Johanna Holmberg, whose study of Moryson, his travels and his travails, sheds light on the lives and emotions of people in the early modern period.

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The dramas of courtly love have captivated readers and dreamers for centuries. Yet they’re often dismissed as something that existed only in the legends of King Arthur and chivalric fantasy.

But in this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Sarah Gristwood tells Professor Suzannah Lipscomb how the Tudors actually re-enacted the roles of the devoted lovers and capricious mistresses first laid out in the romances of medieval literature - romantic obsessions that shaped the history of Britain.

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Not all suspicions of witchcraft led to a formal accusation, and not all such accusations led to trials and execution. During the entire early modern period, the large, Lutheran duchy of Württemberg in southwestern Germany - where there were some 600 accusations - only 350 went to trial, 197 of which ended with burning at the stake. So what does this tell us about how people understood themselves and each other, the psychology and emotions of those accused, and how they tried to defend themselves? 

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. Laura Kounine, who has been studying how the community, church, and agents of the law sought to identify witches, and the ways in which ordinary men and women fought for their lives in an attempt to avoid execution.

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King Henry VIII was deeply religious and started out as a staunch supporter of the Pope and the Roman Catholic church. But everything changed when Henry's need to produce a male successor led to his wanting to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. 

In this first of an occasional series of Explainer podcasts, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb offers everything you ever wanted to know about one of the most famous and far-reaching episodes in British history.

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Between February 1534 and June 1535, the German city of Münster was seized and ruled over by a radical group of Protestant Christians called Anabaptists who believed the Biblical Apocalypse was imminent. Their leader styled himself as a new King Solomon. He took 16 wives and - allegedly - personally executed those who opposed him. 

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. Kat Hill about this extraordinary attempt to create the "New Jerusalem" and its inevitably disastrous outcome.

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What was the 16th century ideal of beauty for women? Fat or thin? Blonde or brunette? Pale or tanned? How did women keep clean? Did they remove their body hair?

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb gets the lowdown from Jill Burke - Professor of Renaissance Visual and Material Cultures at the University of Edinburgh - on all the tips to become an authentic Renaissance Woman.

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