The Serpent’s Mark by SW Perry
Elizabethan medicine: spectacularly wrong – and likely to kill you
Medicine in Elizabethan times was all too likely to kill the patient, author SW Perry tells Historia. But it wasn’t necessarily the doctors’ fault. Most of what they believed about curing diseases and healing injuries was based on theories which were spectacularly wrong.
The Man with the Blue Sleeve
Victoria Blake on how her fascination with a painting inspired her new novel, Titian’s Boatman. It all began when I fell in love with a man. Rather an unusual event for me because I’ve been with my partner Maureen for eighteen years now. The man in question hangs on the wall of Room 2 in the […]
Historia Interviews: Sarah Gristwood
In her ambitious new book, Game of Queens, Sarah Gristwood explores the lives of twelve remarkable women, all pivotal figures in sixteenth century European politics. Through their stories Gristwood describes the complex and significant networks of female power running through Renaissance Europe that have often been overlooked by history. We are able to understand the […]
Escaping the Tudors
Linda Porter on why she’s happy to leave the sixteenth century behind. Last year I appeared in two programmes in the Channel Five ‘Last Days’ series, talking about Mary Queen of Scots and Charles I. Much of my contribution on Mary was eventually edited out because it did not fit the overall ‘well, she was […]
Are the Stuarts the New Tudors?
It’s quite possible that we have reached peak Tudor. Henry VIII’s stinking, gangrenous leg has been endlessly speculated upon, every layer of Elizabeth I’s petticoats has been lifted and thoroughly searched and Anne Boleyn’s execution has been read, learned and inwardly digested from all possible angles. There are even novels that speculate upon what might […]
The Girl in the Glass Tower by Elizabeth Fremantle
The Girl in the Glass Tower is the fourth novel from acclaimed historical fiction author Elizabeth Fremantle and continues her exploration of, in her words, ‘the invisibility of early modern women’s lives’ with perhaps her most challenging character. Lady Arbella Stuart was the great-granddaughter of Henry VIII’s sister Margaret Tudor and niece to Mary Queen […]
Lewd Strumpets!
Towards the end of Elizabeth I’s long reign rumours ran rife about the promiscuous behaviour of the ‘flouting wenches’(1) in the royal household where affairs, illegitimate births and shot-gun marriages abounded. The Queen, concerned that her own reputation would suffer by association and beset by deep anxieties about her position, meted out stringent punishments for […]