Adultery, incest, treason: there were several great families at the courts of the Tudors who excelled in these practices. The Boleyns and the Howards may spring to mind, but, as Alexandra Walsh explains, the scandalous Seymours were ahead of all the others. In a court bursting with intrigue, skulduggery and scandal, where friends could become […]
Henry VIII, impotence and the thorny question of male heirs
Henry VIII died 475 years ago, on 28 January, 1547. To mark the occasion, we asked the author Carol McGrath to draw upon her new book, Sex and Sexuality in Tudor England, to examine the king’s notoriously turbulent sex life. She focusses on the driving force behind his many marriages: his obsession with fathering a […]