How to Treat Depression in 17th Century Engla...

Who had a stronger claim to the English throne than Henry VII? When Henry Tudor took the crown on the battlefield at Bosworth, his hereditary claim was fragile. Eighteen Plantagenet descendants had a more legitimate right to rule, while pretenders Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbec ...  Show more

Was there really a 17th century Italian woman who helped hundreds of wives murder their husbands, or is her story a myth born of fear and gossip?Professor Suzannah Lipscomb investigates the legend of Giulia Tofana, the so-called criminal mastermind behind a secret poison network. ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Robert Burton's masterpiece The Anatomy of Melancholy.In 1621 the priest and scholar Robert Burton published a book quite unlike any other. The Anatomy of Melancholy brings together almost two thousand years of scholarship, from Ancient Greek p ...  Show more

What was life really like in Tudor England? This was a society where monarchy was under strain, the church was in crisis and contending with war, rebellion, plague and poverty was a fact of daily life. Yet it was also an age rich in ideas and ideals, where women asserted their ...

From Acts of Parliament to unethical clinical studies to legendary symphonies (possibly) - syphilis has stained many different areas of history.

To find out what this disease is, what it does to the body and how treatments of it and the people who have it have changed, K ...

The birth of psychiatry in the early-19th century changed the way that 'madness' was understood, with beliefs in the supernatural becoming evidence of insanity. Charlotte Hodgman spoke to Professor Owen Davies about the men and women who found themselves placed in asylums as a re ...  Show more