The Interregnum

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the woman who, as a child bride, became mother to the boy who would eventually become the first king in the Tudor dynasty. Lady Margaret Beaufort (c1443-1509) was twelve when she married Edmund Tudor, half his age, and gave birth to their son Henry ...  Show more

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the exchange of cultures and biology across the Atlantic and Pacific after 1492. That was when Columbus reached the Bahamas, a time when Europe had no potatoes, tomatoes, sunflowers or, arguably, syphilis in its most virulent form; the Americas had ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the period between the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the unexpected restoration of his son Charles II in 1660, known as The Interregnum. It was marked in England by an elusive pursuit of stability, with serious consequences in Scotland and not ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the momentum behind rebellion in Ireland in 1798, the people behind the rebellion and the impact over the next few years and after. Amid wider unrest, the United Irishmen set the rebellion on its way, inspired by the French and American revolutiona ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the years of bloody conflict that saw Simon de Montfort (1205-65) become the most powerful man in England, with Henry III as his prisoner. With others, he had toppled Henry in 1258 in a secret, bloodless coup and established provisions for more par ...  Show more

It's 1660 and General Edward Whalley and his son-in-law board a ship bound for the New World. They're on the run, wanted for the murder of King Charles I. His execution, the culmination of the English Civil War, sees control taken from the royalists by Oliver Cromwell and his ...