Not Just the Tudors

History Hit

Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks about everything from the Aztecs to witches, Velázquez to Shakespeare, Mughal India to the Mayflower. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors.

Each episode Suzannah is joined by historians and experts to reveal incredible stories about one of the most fascinating periods in history.

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Our Editor's Take

The title of the history podcast Not Just the Tudors indicates the theme. Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is an expert on the British Tudor dynasty. This era includes Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. But this podcast discusses many historical topics beyond just England's most famous dynasty. Each episode features historians and experts. They share fascinating stories about different periods in history.

Listeners can expect a diverse range of subjects that are not limited by time or location. The show explains things like the importance of coffee and tobacco. The podcast also talks about lesser-known stories. Most people do not know that the British shipped poor children on their own to America for centuries. Not Just the Tudors explains what happened to them. The podcast also talks about both court intrigues and ancient Indigenous civilizations.

Not Just the Tudors is not afraid to get earthy when it comes to discussing history. The show discusses what one episode title calls "Filth, Noise & Stench in England." Another episode discusses "Menstruation in Early Modern England." Professor Lipscomb also hosts knowledgeable guests like Dr. Sara Read and Natalie Grueninger. The experts provide insights on these captivating tales throughout every episode. The podcast discusses significant events such as witch hunts across Europe. Not Just the Tudors also explores lesser-known figures like painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Not Just The Tudors presents a unique perspective on world history. It goes outside of traditional narratives often taught in schools today. The podcast educates listeners interested in learning more about the world's past. The show doesn't limit topics within one specific era or region. So it is more comprehensive. Listeners can learn more about many aspects of human civilization with this podcast.

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The Birth of Science in 16th Century Europe

The Birth of Science in 16th Century Europe

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 >

Episodes

The Birth of Science in 16th Century Europe

The Birth of Science in 16th Century Europe

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 >

How Spices Shaped the Modern World

How Spices Shaped the Modern World

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 >

Elizabeth I: Make-Up & Beauty Tips

Elizabeth I: Make-Up & Beauty Tips

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

Unusual Births and Disability in 17th Century England

Unusual Births and Disability in 17th Century England

**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

Seducing James I: Mary & George

Seducing James I: Mary & George

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.

Erasmus: Renaissance Radical

Erasmus: Renaissance Radical

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.

Wars of Religion: A Woman's Fight for Justice

Wars of Religion: A Woman's Fight for Justice

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 languageEnjoy 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.

Surgery in the Early Modern Age

Surgery in the Early Modern Age

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

Jewish History of Venice

Jewish History of Venice

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.

Tudor Ladies-in-Waiting

Tudor Ladies-in-Waiting

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.

Diary of a Tudor Gentlewoman

Diary of a Tudor Gentlewoman

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.

Trial of Charles I

Trial of Charles I

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.

How to Live Like a Stuart Aristocrat

How to Live Like a Stuart Aristocrat

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: Henry VIII’s Third Queen

Jane Seymour: Henry VIII’s Third Queen

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.

Adventures of a Mughal Princess

Adventures of a Mughal Princess

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.

Origins of Fairy Tales

Origins of Fairy Tales

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 >

Science vs. Witchcraft: The Kepler Trial

Science vs. Witchcraft: The Kepler Trial

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.

Ghosts & Guardian Angels

Ghosts & Guardian Angels

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 >

The Rise and Fall of Britain's Islands

The Rise and Fall of Britain's Islands

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=monthlyYou can take part in our listener survey here >