Love: a weird & wonderful history

In 1756, Elizabeth Marsh set sail from Gibraltar to Britain with the intention of meeting her fiancé. Instead, she was captured by Barbary corsairs – effectively pirates operating from north Africa, carrying off their victims into slavery – and taken to a Moroccan prince. But cou ...  Show more

As Elizabeth I entered the final chapter of her reign, questions of ageing, succession, and legacy loomed large. In this final episode of our four-part Sunday Series on the Tudor monarch, Rachel Dinning is joined by historian Nicola Tallis to explore the queen’s later years, her ...  Show more

From the notorious thief Mary Frith in the seventeenth century to industrialist and LGBT trailblazer Anne Lister in the nineteenth, these heroines redefined what a woman could be and what she could do in pre-twentieth-century Britain.

Holly Kyte, author and literary ...

Is the author’s responsibility to the quality of the novel or the truth of history? What makes a great historical novel and which authors have contributed to our understanding of history. Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook range across literature in search of the best of historica ...  Show more

From Henry VIII declaring himself as the ‘loyal and most assured servant’ of Anne Boleyn to the poems lavished on Elizabeth I by her suitors, the dramas of courtly love have captivated readers and dreamers for centuries. 

In this edition of Not Just the Tudo ...

How can you condense the history of the world into a book? Well-celebrated historian Simon Sebag Montefiore does just that in his new epic. He takes Dan on an exhilarating journey through the families that have shaped our world: the Caesars, Medicis and Incas, Ottomans and Mug ...