Not Just the Tudors

Albrecht Dürer was the greatest German artist to come out of the Renaissance, whose high quality woodcuts revolutionised the potential of the medium. A spectacular exhibition at the National Gallery in London - the first major UK show of his work in nearly 20 years - charts Dürer's extensive travels to the Alps, Italy, Venice and the Netherlands, exploring how his journeys fuelled his curiosity and creativity, and increased his fame and influence across the continent. 

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb goes to the National Gallery and is joined by curator Dr. Susan Foister to tour the show and find out more about Dürer, the world he encountered and how he depicted it.

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The true crime genre - stories of actual murders and other crimes that are then fictionalised - is not a new phenomenon. More than four centuries ago, a series of plays based on real life cases appeared on the London stage. It was a short-lived craze generated by the insatiable early modern appetite for the "three Ms" - melodrama, moralizing and misogyny. 

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to author Charles Nicholl about the little known phenomenon of Elizabethan true crime, which even influenced the works of William Shakespeare.

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On 9 March 1566, David Rizzio - close friend and private secretary to Mary, Queen of Scots - was stabbed dozens of times in front of the pregnant Queen at the instigation of her husband, Lord Darnley in an apparent bid to destroy both her and her unborn heir so that Darnley himself could rule Scotland. He had also made a bargain with his allies in return for restoring their lands and titles.

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to crime novelist Denise Mina about her re-telling of this tale of sex, seduction, secrets and lies, looking at history through a modern lens and exploring the lengths to which men - and women - will go for love and power.

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Our image of the Tudor era remains overwhelmingly white. But the black presence in England was much greater than has previously been recognised, and Tudor conceptions of race were far more complex than we have been led to believe.  

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. Onyeka Nubia whose original research shows that Tudors from many walks of life regularly interacted with people of African descent, both at home and abroad - findings that cast a new light on the Tudor age and our own attitudes towards race relations in history.

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Was Henry VIII as all-powerful and tyrannical as we have come to believe? Is the scheming of Thomas Cromwell portrayed in Wolf Hall close to the truth? What were the roles of the clergy, or parliament, or the land-owning gentry, in supporting or influencing the sweeping changes that rocked England during the period?

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Professor George Bernard. He has been picking apart the conventional view of Tudor society, the work of influential past historians, and the roles of a Machiavellian monarch, the church and individuals, to ask where did the power really lie? And did they really have a choice?

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Early in the morning of Sunday 13 November 1536, a London merchant named Robert Pakington was shot dead crossing Cheapside as he walked to church. It was the first gun crime in London's history. But who pulled the trigger? In a time of religious turmoil, was Pakington's murder perhaps provoked by his outspoken criticism of the clergy?

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb speaks to historian and writer Derek Wilson, whose novel  The First Horseman launched a series exploring true, unsolved Tudor crimes.

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Since its first outing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2017, the stage musical Six has become a worldwide theatre sensation. In it, the six wives of Henry VIII are re-imagined as a girl band, competing to decide who will lead the group based on how much they suffered while married to Henry.

Six was created by two Cambridge undergrads, Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, while they were studying for their final exams. In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to them, to discover the story of how they brought Henry VIII's six wives out from under their husband's shadow and gave each of them their moment in the spotlight.

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In 1547, the 14-year-old future Queen Elizabeth I is living with her step-mother Queen Catherine Parr and her new husband Thomas Seymour, uncle to Elizabeth's half-brother King Edward VI. But when Seymour begins an overt flirtation with Elizabeth, she is sent away by Catherine. Later, when Seymour is arrested for treason, Elizabeth and Seymour's relationship comes under close scrutiny.

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. Elizabeth Norton about this harrowing and potentially damaging episode from the early life of the Virgin Queen.

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Oliver Cromwell - the only commoner to have become Britain's head of state - has puzzled biographers for centuries. He was a complex character, courageous but at the same time devious and self-serving. But the Cromwell who comes through in his own speeches and writings does not give us the full picture.

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Professor Ronald Hutton about his remarkable new book which reveals a Cromwell who was both genuine in his faith and deliberate in his dishonesty.

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In 1682, three impoverished women from Bideford in Devon were hanged, becoming the last people to be executed for witchcraft in England. The evidence against them was flimsy and their conviction was secured against a background of a baying mob mentality. Yet their story has endured, and their names were chanted as recently as the 1980s, as both inspiration and incantation, by women peace activists at Greenham Common.

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to John Callow, whose new book The Last Witches of England demonstrates how the case of the Bideford witches sheds light upon the turbulent religious, political, class and social tensions of the 17th century.  

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