In March, 1603, Queen Elizabeth I, the last Tudor monarch, lies dying at Richmond Palace. The queen’s ministers cluster round her bedside, urging her to name her successor — something she has stubbornly resisted throughout her reign. Almost with her last breath she whispers that James VI of Scotland should succeed her. Or so we’ve […]
Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I by Tracy Borman
Anne Boleyn is a subject of enduring fascination. By far the most famous of Henry VIII’s six wives, she has inspired books, documentaries and films, and is the subject of intense debate even today, almost 500 years after her violent death. For the most part, she is considered in the context of her relationship with […]
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 […]
(Re)writing the Spanish Armada
“Everybody thinks they know the story of the Spanish Armada,” says historian and novelist JD Davies. Yet, as he tells Historia, this is a story that has been reinterpreted and embellished for over 400 years. Which made his own retelling of the Armada story in his new novel, Armada’s Wake, both an opportunity – and […]
A False Hawksman
John Pilkington’s short story, A False Hawksman, is taken from Royal Blood, the HWA collection of Tudor-era stories by well-known historical fiction writers. He says: “The Thomas the Falconer books have proved to be my most successful historical series. I’m very fond of Thomas and was keen to bring him back, choosing a pivotal moment […]
Sultana Isabel: Elizabeth I and the Ottoman Empire
Historian and award-winning author Jerry Brotton on Elizabethan England’s alliance with the Islamic world. Historical events have a way of overtaking a book. When This Orient Isle was published in March 2017, I hoped that it might enable some calmer reflection on the status of today’s British Muslim community by seeing it within a much longer […]
The Countess and the Crown
Our guest this month, Morgan Ring, on the extraordinary life of Lady Margaret Douglas and her crucial role in the Tudor succession. In July 1536, Henry VIII found himself — for the first time in twenty years — with neither a legitimate child nor a pregnant wife. In the absence of a boy born in […]
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 […]