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 […]
What’s in a Name?
Joanna Hickson looks at the naming of characters in historical fiction. Authors who write novels based around medieval royal England often have trouble identifying characters one from another, because the same names crop up time and time again in the family trees of the major dynasties. During the fifteenth century for instance the name Henry […]
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 […]
Historia Interviews: Alison Weir
Alison Weir is one of the UK’s best-loved and best-selling historians. She’s published seventeen history books and five historical novels, selling over 2.7 million books worldwide. Her latest project is ambitious – a re-telling of the lives of Henry VIII’s six wives, in six novels, over six years. The first, Katherine of Aragon: The True […]
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 […]
Linda Porter Watches Wolf Hall
I should begin with an admission. I’m not a great fan of Hilary Mantel’s Tudor novels. To me, they are tediously long and too self-consciously ‘literary’. One of the most telling remarks made about them recently was that of the eminent Tudor historian, Diarmaid MacCulloch, whose eagerly-awaited biography of Thomas Cromwell will no doubt become […]
Tragedy in Minature
This tiny portrait by the Tudor court miniaturist Levina Teerlinc appears to be a charming image of a mother and child, a memento or a keepsake perhaps; but behind it lies a highly political tragedy, inextricably linked to the struggle for the Tudor succession. The mother and child are lady Katherine Grey and her son […]