Tudor England

The woman who put the Spencer family on the map

1 July 2023 9:00 am

Born in 1559, Alice Spencer, a formidable networker, matchmaker and patron of the arts, was the muse of poets including Edmund Spenser and John Milton

Hysterical outbursts: Bewitched, by Jill Dawson, reviewed

9 July 2022 9:00 am

‘Witch-hunt’ has become a handy metaphor for online persecutions, especially of women, though these days it is reputations that go…

It is impossible to imagine Henrician England except through the eyes of Hans Holbein

8 May 2021 9:00 am

‘Holbein redeemed a whole era for us from oblivion,’ remarks the author of a trilogy of novels set at Henry…

The first great English artist – the life and art of Nicholas Hilliard

23 February 2019 9:00 am

When Henry VIII died in 1547, he left a religiously divided country to a young iconoclast who erased a large…

Thomas Cromwell, c. 1530, Holbein School

Diarmaid MacCulloch delves deep into the soul of Thomas Cromwell – administrator, henchman and evangelical

29 September 2018 9:00 am

The final moments of Hilary Mantel’s magnificent Wolf Hall see its central protagonist, Thomas Cromwell, trying to banish ghosts. Assailed…