The traditional view of the birth of modern science places it firmly in the 17th century with such huge names as Bacon, Descartes, Newton, and Galileo.  But a century earlier there were others - whose names are not so well-known to us - who paved the way for later scientific breakthroughs.  Patrons and particular places in northern Europe developed new technology and encouraged collaborations in an environment where intellectual innovation could occur, laying the foundations for subsequent discoveries. In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by Violet Moller, whose new book Inside the Stargazer’s Palace tells the untold story of the extraordinary workshops, observatories and libraries of Early Modern Northern Europe.   This episode was produced by Rob Weinberg. Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code TUDORS - sign up here > You can take part in our listener survey here >

In the 16th century, spices drove the world economy, creating riches on an unprecedented scale. Spanish and Portuguese explorers competed to find the elusive source of cloves and nutmeg, and when Portugal reached the spice islands of the Moluccas, it set in motion a fierce competition for control. In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Roger Crowley, whose new book Spice: The 16th-Century Contest that Shaped the Modern World chronicles the adventures, shipwrecks, and sieges that formed the first colonial encounters—and remade the world economy for centuries to follow. This episode was edited by xx and produced by Rob Weinberg. Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code TUDORS - sign up here > You can take part in our listener survey here >

What do we know about what Elizabeth I actually looked like? How was her appearance altered through the use of cosmetics? Portraits suggest that makeup was used to lightly accentuate lips and cheeks, alongside a sheer wash of white base on her skin. What products would she have typically used and how were they made?  In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by author and educator Sally Pointer, to decipher the truth about Elizabeth's image and how her use of makeup has become part of her enduring legacy. This episode was edited by Ella Blaxill and produced by Rob Weinberg. Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code TUDORS - sign up here: https://www.historyhit.com/subscription/ You can take part in our listener survey here

**WARNING: This episode contains themes that some listeners might find distressing and commonly-used historic terminology that does not reflect our own thoughts** In May 1680, England become obsessed with a pair of conjoined twins. At just two weeks old, Priscilla and Aquila Herring were kidnapped from their home in Somerset to be put on show for money. A fortnight later they were dead, and a legal battle ensued over ownership and income. It is one of the earliest examples of exploitation and the exhibition of physical difference in England, a story of public display without consent, both before and after. In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. Whitney Dirks, whose new book Monstrosity, Bodies, and Knowledge in Early Modern England weaves the case of the Herring sisters through an examination of how physically unusual humans and animals were understood and talked about in early modern England. This episode was produced by Rob Weinberg. Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code TUDORS - sign up here: https://www.historyhit.com/subscription/ You can take part in our listener survey here

The major new TV series, Mary & George tells the scandalous story of George Villiers, who rose - thanks to his mother Mary’s machinations - from minor gentry to enrapture King James VI & I, Britain’s first Stuart king. For a decade, George Villiers was at James’s side – at court, on state occasions and in bed, right up to James’s death in March 1625. In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. Benjamin Wooley, acclaimed author of The King’s Assassin, a compelling portrait of a royal favourite whose charisma overwhelmed those around him and, ultimately, himself. This episode was edited by Ella Blaxill and produced by Rob Weinberg. Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code TUDORS - sign up here. You can take part in our listener survey here.

In the 16th century, Erasmus of Rotterdam was about as famous as anybody could be, one of the greatest intellectuals of his age. To Martin Luther's mind, though, Erasmus's radical religious vision did not go far enough. To Roman Catholic scholars, Erasmus was heretical.  In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by Professor William Barker, to find out more about a scholar of great brilliance as well as personal flaws and contradictions.  This episode was produced by Rob Weinberg. Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code TUDORS - sign up here. You can take part in our listener survey here.

At the end of the French Wars of Religion, a widow Renée Chevalier instigated the prosecution of a military captain who had committed multiple acts of rape, homicide and theft against the villagers who lived around her.  But how could Chevalier win her case when King Henri IV's Edict of Nantes ordered that the recent troubles should be forgotten as 'things that had never been'? In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. Tom Hamilton, whose new book is a dramatic account of the impact of the troubles on daily life for women, peasants, and foot soldiers, who are marginalized in most historical studies. This episode was produced by Rob Weinberg. **WARNING: This podcast contains references to rape, violence and homicide** Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code TUDORS - sign up here > You can take part in our listener survey here >

A controversial figure during his lifetime, Martin Luther set in motion a revolution that split Christianity in the West and left an indelible mark on the world today.  In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, first released in July 2021, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to renowned Luther biographer Professor Lyndal Roper to explore the man behind the carefully crafted image - misogynistic, anti-Semitic, occasionally self-doubting, religiously devout yet with a crude, scatological sense of humour. This episode was produced by Rob Weinberg. **WARNING: This episode contains an example of strong language Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code TUDORS - sign up here. You can take part in our listener survey here.

Today surgery is one of the most important sectors in the medical field. But what was surgery like for people in the 16th and 17th centuries, before anaesthetic and sophisticated technology? How were surgeons trained? What tools did they use? And what was the rate of survival?  In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb discovers more from historian and retired surgeon Michael Crumplin. This episode was edited by Ella Blaxill and produced by Rob Weinberg. **WARNING: Contains some graphic descriptions of surgical procedures** Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code TUDORS - sign up here You can take part in our listener survey here

Essential to any history of Venice during its glory days is the story of its Jewish population. Venice gave the world the word ghetto. Astonishingly, the ghetto prison turned out to be as remarkable a place as the city of Venice itself, as a literary, cultural and interfaith revival flourished.  In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Harry Freedman. His new book Shylock’s Venice tells the story of Venice's Jews, from the founding of the ghetto in 1516, to the capture of Venice by Napoleon in 1798.  This episode was edited by Ella Blaxill and produced by Rob Weinberg. Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code TUDORS - sign up here. You can take part in our listener survey here.

For every Tudor Queen, their ladies-in-waiting were their confidantes, chaperones and intimate witnesses to their lives. These women were high born, even if they performed menial tasks, and many of them were educated. As King Henry VIII changed wives - and the very fabric of the country's structure - these women had to make choices about loyalty that simply didn't exist before. In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb welcomes Dr. Nicola Clark, whose new book The Waiting Game, tells the untold story of the women who served the Tudor Queens. This episode was edited by Ella Blaxill and produced by Rob Weinberg. Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code TUDORS - sign up here. You can take part in our listener survey here.

Diaries written by gentlewomen in the mid-16th century are hard to find. Yet, they lived through an age of upheaval as old ways were effaced in preference for the new. In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb meets award-winning author Francesca Kay. In her new novel The Book of Days, she has imagined herself into the story of a gentlewoman living in the 1540s, writing her book of days, and it is spellbinding. This episode was edited by Ella Blaxill and produced by Rob Weinberg. Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code TUDORS - sign up here. You can take part in our listener survey here.

In the mid-17th century, King Charles I of England was put on trial for treason against the sovereign state. Such a process involved a singular determination by Parliament to find a way, through due legal process, to try the one they saw as a man of blood, to ensure that he paid the price for his faults and failings, but not through extrajudicial summary justice. To understand how such a thing came about, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb speaks in this episode of Not Just the Tudors to Professor Edward Vallance, who has deeply researched King Charles I's trial.  This episode was produced by Rob Weinberg. Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code TUDORS - sign up here. You can take part in our listener survey here.

After the Restoration of the Monarchy, the upper classes took their cues from court life - its entertainments, costumes, food and leisure pursuits. The Stuart-era aristocracy were cultured, political, well educated, immoderate yet religious. So how did devotion and piety coexist with a lifestyle dominated by excess?  In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb finds out from Ben Norman, historian and author of Pomp and Piety: Everyday Life of the Aristocracy in Stuart England. This episode was produced by Rob Weinberg. Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code TUDORS - sign up here > You can take part in our listener survey here >

Jane Seymour is a paradox. Of Henry VIII’s six wives, she is the one about whom we know perhaps the least. She was the most lowly of the queens, but she had royal blood. She's often described as plain and mousy and lacking opinions, but when we do see her in the sources, she tends to be doing something that shows agency, while wearing some very flashy clothes indeed. So what can we make of Jane Seymour? In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. Elizabeth Norton, author of a 2009 book about Jane Seymour and a forthcoming scholarly biography. This episode was produced by Rob Weinberg. Opening music: The Death of Queen Jane, performed by Karine Polwart, used with kind permission of the artist and Hudson Records. Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code TUDORS - sign up here. You can take part in our listener survey here.

In the British Library, there is a manuscript copy of the memoir of Princess Gulbadan, the only surviving female-authored memoir from the Mughal Empire. In it, Gulbadan tells her extraordinary story: from growing up in a multi-cultural society, via life in a walled harem, to an unprecedented women's pilgrimage to Mecca, complete with dramatic shipwreck in the Red Sea. In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb finds out more from Professor Ruby Lal, whose latest book, Vagabond Princess: The Great Adventures of Gulbadan, examines this largely forgotten manuscript and the life of the remarkable woman who wrote it. This episode was edited by Ella Blaxill and produced by Rob Weinberg. Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code TUDORS - sign up here. You can take part in our listener survey here.

Fairy tales exist everywhere and in every time. Through centuries of oral tradition and the invention of print and later advances in television and film, fairy tales have altered and shaped themselves in reflection of changing cultural norms.  In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb goes back to the 16th and 17th centuries and to the first time that fairy tales were written down and compiled. She is joined by Nicholas Jubber, author of The Fairy Tellers: A Journey into the Secret History of Fairy Tales. This episode was produced by Rob Weinberg. **WARNING: This episode contains some graphic language and descriptions** Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code TUDORS. Sign up now for your 14-day free trial here > You can take part in our listener survey here >

Astronomer Johannes Kepler was an important and admired figure in the scientific revolution of the early 17th century. But when his widowed mother was accused of witchcraft, the scientist remarkably defended her, in a trial that lasted six years. In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to author Ulinka Rublack who has pieced together this extraordinary true story. This episode was edited by Ella Blaxill and produced by Rob Weinberg. Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code TUDORS - sign up here. You can take part in our listener survey here.

In Elizabethan and Stuart England, ghosts weren't supposed to exist. Protestant preachers and writers had banished them - but people continued to see them. So how did our early modern forebears reckon with ghosts and their heavily counterpart, angels? In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb finds out from Professor Peter Marshall, author of several books on ghosts, beliefs and the dead in Reformation England. This episode was edited by Ella Blaxill and produced by Rob Weinberg. Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code TUDORS. Sign up now for your 14-day free trial here > You can take part in our listener survey here >

How did Britain's islands become woven into our collective cultural psyche? Traversing Irish poetry, Renaissance drama and Restoration utopias, author Alice Albinia’s research has boldly upturned established truths about Britain, paying homage to the islands' beauty, independence and their suppressed or forgotten histories - including of women rulers. In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Alice Albinia talks more about her book The Britannias: An Island Quest with Professor Suzannah Lipscomb.  This episode was edited by Tomos Delargy and produced by Rob Weinberg. Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code TUDORS. Sign up now for your 14-day free trial here: https://access.historyhit.com/checkout/subscribe/receipt?code=tudors&plan=monthly You can take part in our listener survey here >