Book review – Tudor history
We’ll never know what treasures the Tudor Reformation robbed us of
Amy Jeffs likens the shattered world of medieval Christianity to the dispersed relics of the many saints whose memory Henry VIII hoped to obliterate
The great Tudor catfight
Apart from glorying in a memorable name, Lettice Knollys has chiefly been known for her connections — with her second…
Power slips from Gloriana’s jewelled fingers
If you’ve been watching Game of Thrones recently, you’ll have seen an old folkloric fantasy in which a bewitching young…
When English Catholics were considered as dangerous as jihadis
Martyrdom, these days, does not get a good press. Fifty years ago English Catholics could take a ghoulish pride in…
Elizabeth I, queen of the waiting game
Women are ‘foolish, wanton flibbergibs, in every way doltified with the dregs of the devil’s dunghill’. So a cleric reminded…
Thomas Cromwell: more Tony Soprano than Richard Dawkins
The travel writer Colin Thubron once told me that to understand a country and its people he first asks, ‘What…
