Not Just the Tudors
Channel Details
Not Just the Tudors
Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks about everything from the Aztecs to witches, Velázquez to Shakespeare, Mughal India to the Mayflower. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors.Each episode Suzannah is joined by historians and experts to reveal incredible stories abo...
Recent Episodes
486 episodes
Robespierre & Revolutionary Terror
How did the French Revolution, built on liberty, become ruled by fear? And how did Robespierre - the man who had sent kings, nobles and priests to the...
How Protestants Justified Slavery
Was the Protestant Reformation ever truly global? How did radical theology, empire, slavery and missionary ambition collide across the early modern wo...
French Revolution: Storming of the Bastille
What drove a hungry city to storm a fortress? How did the fall of the Bastille become the defining symbol of the French Revolution?
In this seco...
True Crime: Murder & the Popish Plot
Was a London magistrate, found dead in a ditch in 1678, the victim of a Catholic conspiracy, political convenience, or secrets too dangerous to surviv...
Who Lit the French Revolution?
How did a kingdom of palaces, privilege and powdered wigs collapse into revolution? What turned hunger into uprising?
In this first episode of o...
Bess of Hardwick: Elizabethan England's Richest Woman
How did a Derbyshire gentlewoman become England’s richest woman after Elizabeth I? Why does she still fascinate us as her 500th anniversary approaches...
Edmund Halley & His Comet
How did our understanding of the universe begin in a London coffee house? How did a man who had a comet named after him change science forever?
...
Battle of the Eras: Medieval v. Early Modern
What if the medieval world did not end with a bang, but with a messy argument over who gets to define history itself? Professor Suzannah Lipscomb spar...
Royal Favourites: Queen Anne & Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough
How did Sarah Churchill become the most powerful woman in Queen Anne’s court? What happens when a royal friendship turns into a political battlefield?...
Louis XIV: Sun King and Propagandist
How did Louis XIV use his day-to-day life, especially his marriage, to help create the mythology of the Sun King as semi-divine, radiant and unrivalle...
Hoaxes and Lies in the Enlightenment
How did a ghost story bring London to a standstill? Was it a haunting, a fraud, or something even more revealing about Georgian society? Why did ratio...
Royal Favourites: Robert Dudley, Elizabeth I's Forbidden Love
Passion, scandal, and power collided in the tumultuous relationship between Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley. Rumours of secret trysts between them set t...
Anne Boleyn at Hever Castle
What was Anne Boleyn like before she became the most controversial queen in English history? Can the rooms and gardens at her childhood home reveal mo...
Elizabethans in India
How did England’s earliest travellers to India try to win favour in a Mughal golden age that scarcely noticed them?
Professor Suzannah Lipscomb...
Lady Jane Grey
What if becoming queen was the worst thing that could happen to you? What if the crown became your death sentence?
Professor Suzannah Lipscomb e...
Grace O'Malley, Ireland's Pirate Queen
She cut off her hair to sail the seas. She divorced her husband by locking him out of his own castle. And when her son was killed by the occupying Eng...
When Elves & Fairies Lived Among Us
In the mist‑shrouded Highlands, a quiet minister dared to trespass into forbidden realms. Convinced that fairies were not mere fables but a hidden nat...
Ireland Under the Brutal Tudors
What impact did the Tudors have on Ireland, not just in the councils of kings and earls, but in the rhythms of ordinary life? What were the consequenc...
Girl With a Pearl Earring: Identity Revealed
Could one of art’s greatest mysteries at last be solved? Who was the luminous girl with a pearl earring in Vermeer's iconic painting? Professor Suza...
Hamnet
How much do we really know about William Shakespeare, his wife Anne Hathaway, and the family tragedies that may have shaped the bard's greatest work?...
Elizabeth I's Succession Crisis
What happens when a Queen refuses to name her heir? How does she hold her kingdom together when every courtier is secretly preparing for her death? Wh...
Mother of All Tudors: Margaret Beaufort
Step into the turbulent heart of the Wars of the Roses and meet one of history’s most formidable survivors: Lady Margaret Beaufort.
A child brid...
How to Stay Alive in Renaissance England
In 16th and 17th century England, the plague and pox, disease and injury were a daily presence. At at time when medicine was a complex interplay of tr...
Fig Leaves & A Grumpy Jesus: Renaissance to Baroque Art
Have you ever wandered through a museum and thought: Why is the Virgin Mary always dressed in blue? Did they really use eggs in egg tempera—and did i...
Rudolf II, the "Mad Habsburg Emperor"
In the final episode of her short series on the Habsburg dynasty, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb turns to one of the most fascinating and misunderstood r...
Marlowe & Shakespeare: Rivals or Collaborators?
Professor Suzannah Lipscomb engages in a captivating conversation with award-winning dramatist Liz Duffy Adams about the new Royal Shakespeare product...
Habsburg Women: Matriarchs of Power
When we think of the Habsburgs, the spotlight usually falls on emperors, kings, and archdukes—powerful men who dominated Europe. But behind the scene...
Vanity of Henry VIII with Kate Lister
With six wives, Henry VIII must have had something going for him, right? Was he handsome? Charming? Intelligent? Just plain powerful? In this episode,...
Charles V, Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor
In the second episode of our special Habsburg dynasty series, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by renowned historian Professor Geoffrey Parker to...
Shakespeare's Male Muse: A Mystery Solved?
Could a long-hidden miniature painting unlock the mystery of Shakespeare’s most intimate poetry? Unearthed after 400 years in a private collection, a...
Rise of the Habsburgs
In the first of a special four-part series on the Habsburgs, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb traces the unlikely rise of Europe’s most enduring imperial f...
Oliver Cromwell v. Charles I
On 30 January 1649, the unthinkable happened: for the first time in history, a reigning monarch was tried and condemned by his own people. But how di...
The English Civil War
What sparks a nation to turn against its own king? Professor Suzannah Lipscomb dives into the turbulent and transformative decade that witnessed the...
Tudor True Crime: Europe's Most Murderous Dynasty
The rich and powerful Guise family was one of the most treacherous and bloodthirsty in sixteenth-century France. They whipped up religious bigotry, o...
Tudor True Crime: Murder in the Stuart Court
The public fascination with true crime is nothing new. Four centuries ago, the sensational story of the death in the Tower of London of Thomas Overbu...
Tudor True Crime: Murder of Amy Dudley
**WARNING: This episode contains descriptions of suicide**
On 6 September 1560, Amy Robsart Dudley died after falling down a staircase at Cumnor...
Tudor True Crime: Murder of Christopher Marlowe
Who stabbed the famed playwright? And who planned it? We're stepping out of the sun and into the shadows on Not Just the Tudors, as Professor Suzanna...
Othered: Race, Gender & Human 'Monsters'
**Contains examples of 'othering', including birth abnormalities, and the terms used to describe them historically**
Professor Suzannah Lipscomb...
Molière: Satire, Scandal & the Stage
Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by Professor Jan Clarke to explore the life, legend, and legacy of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin — better known as Moli...
Vasari: Inventor of Artistic Genius
What if the tale of one night could change the way we view art forever?
Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by Dr. Noah Charney to explore the...