The Royal Studies Podcast

In this episode, host Ellie Woodacre interviews Dr. Peter Stiffell about his research on the imagery and iconography of Mary I, Mary's reputation as "Bloody Mary" and exciting new discovery that Peter has made, uncovering a piece of royal material culture that was considered to be lost. 

GUEST BIO: Dr. Peter Stiffell is an independent scholar who specialises in the Marian regime. He completed his PhD at the centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS) at the University of Kent. His thesis “Maiden, Matriarch, Majesty: The iconography of Queen Mary I” examined the imagery surrounding the queen. In particular, he examined the portraiture, legal imagery, seals and coinage depicting England’s Tudor queen.  

• Find Peter online:
  •  X= @PStiffell, Insta @p.stiffell97
  • Peter's website: www.drpeterstiffell.com
• Forthcoming publications:
  • ‘The Marian revolution: The imagery of Mary I in popular imagination’ in Adapting the Tudors: From Novels to Film to Public History 
  • "Sole quene": The legal imagery of Mary I’ in Mary I of England’s Artistic Patronage in Renaissance Europe, ed. Emma Luisa Cahill Marron (Palgrave Macmillan)    

In this episode, host Ellie Woodacre interviews Emma Cahill Marrón about her pop up exhibition at the British Museum 'Faces of Eternity'. We discuss the items features, the iconography of Renaissance royal women, the use of medals and coins as propaganda and Mary I Tudor as both a English and Spanish queen. 

This mini exhibition will be running until mid-October 2025 in the Money Gallery at the British Museum, room 68, case 10. Here is a link to a short video of Ellie and Emma visiting the exhibition in London.

Guest Bio: Dr Emma Cahill Marrón is an art historian who specialises in queenly iconography and patronage, with a particular focus on Katherine of Aragon. She completed her PhD at the University of Murcia (Spain) and is part of the research group there, 'Arte, Poder y Genéro' and the 'Mefer' project led by Noelia Garcia Perez. For more on her upcoming publications and events, see below:

o   To learn all about the women mentioned in the interview this summer tune in every Thursday to the series series ‘Parallel Lives’ in Dr. Emma & Me in the Tudors Dynasty Podcast.

o   This fall Emma will be collaborating with Rebecca Larson from Tudors Dynasty & Beyond to bring you a six-week course titled Katherine of Aragon: Forging a Queen. Send an email to [email protected] to get all the details about this new course!

For more follow Emma on social media (X, Bluesky, Insta)

o   Dr. Emma Luisa Cahill Marrón

• X: @EmmaLCahill
• Instagram: @emmacahillmarron

o   Arte, Poder, Género

• X: @artepodergenero
• Instagram: @artepodergenero

In this episode, host Ellie Woodacre interviews the winner of the Royal Studies Journal PGR/ECR Article Prize Winner for 2025, Patrik Pastrnak. We discuss his research on bridal journeys, what can go wrong at royal weddings and his prize winning article (see link below).

Article: Mechanics of Royal Generosity: The Gifts from the Wedding of King Matthias Corvinus and Beatrice of Aragon (1476), Speculum 98.3 (2023) https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/725011

Guest Bio: Patrik Pastrnak is an assistant professor at the Department of History, Palacky University Olomouc (Czech Republic). He earned a DPhil degree at New College, Oxford, where he held the Robert Oresko Memorial Scholarship. He is interested in royal nuptials and wedding journeys in medieval and early modern times, as well as court, queenship, royal, festival, and Neo-Latin studies in Europe (mostly Central Europe and Italy). He is the author of Dynasty in motion. Wedding journeys in late medieval and early modern Europe (Routledge, 2023) and several other studies on the topic of travelling, wedding ceremonies, and rituals. His current project deals with Bohemian queenship in the late Middle Ages.

This episode focuses on RSJ Issue 12.1 (June 2025) a special issue on 'Material Culture and Built Heritage: Manifestations of Scotland's Royal Past, Present and Future', guest edited by Drs Lucinda H. S. Dean and Amy Hayes. The issue features six full length articles on various aspects of Scotland's rich material culture from the Stuart period ranging from the reign of James IV to considerations of the survival of the Trinity collegiate church, built by a 15th century queen, in the landscape of modern Edinburgh.

Host Ellie Woodacre interviews the editors here, discussing the unique elements of Scotland's royal heritage and the big themes which have emerged in the articles of this special issue

Guest Bios: 

Dr Amy Hayes Staff Tutor and Lecturer in History at the Open University: medieval queenship, particularly focused on socio-cultural role of Scottish queens consort. Also, elite medieval women and children, and Scottish medieval history more broadly. Upcoming monograph on Scottish queens consort with Palgrave Macmillan’s Queenship and Power series. 

Dr Lucy Dean is senior lecturer and interim Head of the Centre for History, UHI. She researches, publishes and teaches on medieval and early modern ritual, ceremony, kingship, material culture, gender (particularly masculinity), the life cycle (especially youth and old age) and public history in Scotland and beyond. She is co-investigator on the Perth Charterhouse Project, co-author of the Routledge Exploring Monarchy in Medieval Europe, 1000-1500 (forthcoming), author of Death and the Royal Succession in Scotland, c.1214-c.1543: Ritual, Ceremony and Power (Boydell, 2024) and long-standing member of the Royal Studies Network.

In this episode, host Amy-Jane Humphries interviews Natalee Garrett, Sarah Betts and Rosalind Freeborn to discuss (fictional) representations of regency royalty.

Guest Bios:

Sarah Betts is a PhD candidate at the University of York working on a thesis exploring cultural memory and public histories of the English Civil Wars from the Seventeenth Century to the present day. She has wider interests in the history of monarchy and public history and heritage, and historical fictions, and is a section editor for early modern and modern monarchy for Royal Studies Journal. She has published numerous articles and book chapters on early modern and modern monarchy in Britain, memory of the English Civil Wars, and the portrayal of history on screen. Her most recent publications include 

• Royal Biography Between the Lines: Georgette Heyer’s Regency Romances and the Life of Princess Charlotte of Wales (1796-1817) RSJ 11.2 (2024)  
• Latest publications - 'Roundhead Reputations Twenty Years On: Cultural Memory Studies and the English Civil Wars',English Historical Review, 138:593, (2023) 
•  'By The Sword Divided: The English Civil War as Sunday-night Television Drama', British Journal of Military History, 10:3, (2024) 

Natalee Garrett graduated with a PhD in Modern History from the University of St Andrews in 2022 for a thesis titled “Those Scandalous Prints: Caricatures of the Elite in France and Britain c.1740-1795”. She began teaching at the Open University in 2021. Her first monograph, a biography of Queen Charlotte, was published by Routledge in 2024. She is currently working on a second monograph which examines the public images of the four queens of Georgian Britain and which will be published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Rosalind Freeborn started her career as a book publicist and moved into the world of music handling the publicity for the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Later she ran her own PR consultancy working with creative clients in the fields of art, design, retail and architecture. She is also an artist who exhibits and sells her work regularly. In 2022 Rosalind appeared on a Channel 4 life drawing programme demonstrating her unique collage technique using fragments of paper. She was prompted to write Prince George & Master Frederick after investigating her grandmother’s story that her family might, in some way, be connected to King George III. Her research uncovered the real-life history of Frederick Blomberg and she found his story so fascinating that she wrote this novel which is her first published work.

In this episode, host Victoria Barlow is joined by guest Susannah Lyon-Whaley to discuss the royal links with early 17th century gardening practices and the A Queen's Book of Flowers exhibition running until the end of June in York. Listen in to be transported into the charming landscape of queen Henrietta Maria’s England and the exotic plants that were being cultivated there.

For more information on the exhibition visit the webpage: https://susannahlyon-whale.wixsite.com/queensbookofflowers

Guest Bio:

Susannah Lyon-Whaley is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellow (UKRI-guaranteed) at the University of York. She completed a PhD in Art History at the University of Auckland. She has published on Stuart queens and is the editor of Floral Culture and the Tudor and Stuart Court (Amsterdam University Press). Her new project is titled ‘Observing, Consuming, Engaging, Appropriating Nature (OCEAN): Queens Consorts and Ecologies of Knowledge in Seventeenth-Century Britain.' As part of this project she is working on an exhibition for the Festival of Ideas, which is the subject of this episode’s talk.

@susannah-lw.bsky.social

In this episode, host Dr Susannah Lyon-Whaley interviews Marlene Daut on her new book The First and Last King of Haiti, giving us an insight into this unusual example of Caribbean monarchy.

An award-winning author, scholar, and professor specializing in Haitian history and culture, Marlene L. Daut's most recent book, The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe (Knopf, 2025), explores the fascinating life of Haiti’s only king while delving into the complex history of a 19th-century Caribbean monarchy. Her other books include Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World (Liverpool UP, 2015); Baron de Vastey and the Origins of Black Atlantic Humanism (Palgrave, 2017); and Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution (UNC Press, 2023), co-winner of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize.

Dr Vincent O’Malley FRHistS FRSNZ is an award-winning and bestselling historian who has written and published extensively on the history of Māori and settler relations in New Zealand. His book Voices from the New Zealand Wars/He Reo nō ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa (BWB, 2021) won New Zealand’s premier book award for non-fiction in 2022, and he received a Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement that same year. In 2023, he was awarded the Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi’s Humanities Aronui Medal. Dr O’Malley is a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi and a founding partner of HistoryWorks, which specialises in Treaty of Waitangi research.

His publications include:

"Kingitanga and Crown: New Zealand’s Maori King movement and its relationship with the British monarchy." In Crowns and Colonies: European Monarchies and Overseas Empire, 163-176. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016.

The Great War for New Zealand: Waikato 1800–2000. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2016.

The New Zealand Wars/Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2019.

Voices from the New Zealand Wars/He Reo nō ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2021.

Saira Baker chats with senior curator of photographs at the Royal Collection Trust and curator of the exhibition, Alessandro Nasini, in The King’s Gallery at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh.

‘Royal Portraits: A Century of Photography’ charts the evolution of royal portrait photography from the 1920s to the present day, revealing the stories behind the creation of some of the most iconic images of the British Monarchy.

Bringing together more than 90 photographic prints, proofs and documents from the Royal Collection and the Royal Archives, the exhibition – which follows a successful run in London – will also consider the artistic and technological advances in photography as it evolved into a recognised art form.

Visitors will see glamorous images from the first half of the 20th century, taken by some of the most respected photographers of the era. All of the photographs in the exhibition are vintage prints – the original works produced by the photographer – and the earliest works date from the 1920s and 30s, the golden age of the society photographer. 

In the mid-20th century, no royal photographer had a greater impact on shaping the monarchy’s public image than Cecil Beaton. The exhibition will present some of Beaton’s most memorable photographs, taken over six decades. These include Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother’s famed 1939 shoot in the Buckingham Palace Gardens, dressed in gowns designed by Norman Hartnell, and Beaton’s original Coronation portraits of Queen Elizabeth II – arguably the most prestigious photography commission of the century.

The bold and colourful later photographs in the exhibition will demonstrate the extraordinary variety, power, and at times playfulness of royal portrait photography over the past four decades. These works range from Andy Warhol’s diamond-dust-sprinkled screen print of Queen Elizabeth II to well-known photographs by David Bailey, Nick Knight, Annie Leibovitz and more. 

The exhibition runs until 7 September 2025. For more information about the portraits discussed in this podcast, visit the Royal Collection Trust website and visit the exhibition in person. To book tickets and discover the events programme, see: https://www.rct.uk/collection/exhibitions/royal-portraits-a-century-of-photography/the-kings-gallery-palace-of-holyroodhouse

To find out more about visiting the other royal residences and exhibitions mentioned in the episode, see: https://www.rct.uk

Royal Collection Trust is a charity caring for the Royal Collection and welcoming visitors to the royal palaces. We bring our shared history to life through world-class experiences that involve and inspire people, wherever they are. Income from tickets and retail sales helps us to conserve the Collection so that it can be enjoyed by everyone for generations to come.

Megan Shaw is an art historian who recently completed her PhD at the University of Auckland with her thesis entitled ‘A Female Favourite: Katherine Villiers, Duchess of Buckingham (1603-1649)’. Megan’s doctoral research was supported by a Junior Fellowship with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. Her article on York House in the Furniture History journal includes a transcription of a newly discovered inventory of the Duchess of Buckingham’s closets. Outside of academia she is an archivist and project manager at the Chartwell Collection Trust and her first book on Chartwell’s philanthropy and this prestigious New Zealand art collection will be published in early April.

See the artworks discussed in the episode:
Peter Paul Rubens, Portrait of Katherine Villiers, Duchess of Buckingham and her family 

Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), Charles I and Henrietta Maria with their two eldest children, Prince Charles and Princess Mary, April-August 1632, Royal Collection Trust

Villiers tomb at Westminster