Not Just the Tudors

On a cold February morning in 1554, Lady Jane Grey was beheaded for high treason. Named as King Edward VI as his successor, Queen Jane had reigned for just 13 tumultuous days before being imprisoned in the Tower, condemned and executed.

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to author and historian Nicola Tallis who reveals the moving, human story of an intelligent, independent and courageous young woman, forced on to the English throne by the great power players in the Tudor court.

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Who was Thomas More - Knight, Chancellor and Martyr? His life is paradoxical, with More regarded as both saint and persecutor, Humanist intellectual and bigoted zealot. His religious writings, with their - at times - violent attacks on what he regarded as heresy, have been hotly debated.  

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Professor Tom Betteridge. In his work, he has placed Thomas More in a broader cultural context and argues for a revision to the existing histories of the man and his reputation.

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The Gunpowder Plot is one of the hinge events of British history - an act of terror the roots of which stretch back to the Tudor period and Henry VIII's break with Rome. It's a story of Holy War, divided loyalties and religious hatred. And it has never been more timely. 

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Suzannah Lipscomb talks gunpowder, treason and plot with historian and broadcaster Jessie Childs, author of the award-winning God’s Traitors. 

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In the early 1530s, the painter Hans Holbein the Younger returns to London. His patronage by Anne Boleyn and the influential Thomas Cromwell leads to Holbein creating the full-length portrait of King Henry VIII that has dominated how we have visualised him ever since. 

In this second of a two-part Not Just the Tudors special, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb further explores Holbein's fascinating life and work with three of the world's foremost scholars of the artist - Jeanne Nuechterlein, Franny Moyle and Susan Foister. 

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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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