Rebels, hostages and diplomats: royal women o...

Many histories of the 16th century tell stories of monarchs and courtiers – but there is, of course, much more to the century than that. Speaking to Charlotte Vosper, Nandini Das charts the ways in which migration and movement shaped the Tudor and Stuart periods, and traces the l ...  Show more

Stretching from Greece to India, Alexander the Great’s empire was one of the largest in human history, and he’d conquered it all by the time he was 30 years old. So how did this young king of a small Greek kingdom defeat the mighty Persian empire and become a godlike figure in th ...  Show more

Little has been known up until now about the involvement and power of women during the Crusader period. When Saladin's armies besieged Jerusalem in 1187, behind the city walls a last-ditch defense was being led by an unlikely trio - including Sibylla, Queen of Jerusalem. She w ...

Aethelfled, a warrior queen who crushed the Vikings, Jadwiga, the first Queen Regent of Poland and Hildegard of Bingen, an 11th-century polymath abbess who became a 20th-century feminist icon and saint. Art and cultural historian Dr Janina Ramirez joins Dan on today's episode ...

In 972AD a princess of the Byzantine Empire was sent by her uncle, the Roman emperor in Constantinople, to marry the son of Otto the Great - Emperor of the Latin West. A tantalising and formidable figure, Theophanu became a major player in one of the most tumultuous and mysteriou ...  Show more

Born in poverty at a time when the Roman Empire was in danger of cracking up and disintegrating, Helena was set for a life of obscurity as a stable hand, bar maid, and, according to some, a prostitute. Yet, in the most improbable tale she rose through the social hierarchy to be p ...  Show more