Bess of Hardwick: Elizabethan England's Richest Woman
How did a Derbyshire gentlewoman become England’s richest woman after Elizabeth I? Why does she still fascinate us as her 500th anniversary approaches?From four marriages and vast wealth to Hardwick Hall, Chatsworth and the Cavendish dynasty, Bess of Hardwick turned survival into ...Show more
Edmund Halley & His Comet
How did our understanding of the universe begin in a London coffee house? How did a man who had a comet named after him change science forever?From his youthful voyage to St Helena to chart the southern skies, to his pioneering studies of navigation, longitude, gravity, and the E ...Show more
The Mayflower and its Pilgrims
Why did the Pilgrims risk everything in search of a new life and religious freedom? Why does their contested history still matter ahead of the 250th anniversary of American independence?In 1620, the Mayflower carried English religious separatists, across the Atlantic to found Ply ...Show more
Jamestown: From Colony to Cannibalism
**This episode contains graphic explorations of starvation and cannibalism**What happens when a colony reaches the edge of survival?In this third episode leading up to the 250th anniversary of American independence,Professor Suzannah Lipscomb and Dr Rachel Winchcombe examine the ...Show more
How did one woman scandalise sixteenth century London by refusing to live by its rules?Mary Frith - aka Moll Cutpurse - rejected the expectations of respectable womanhood, wore men’s clothes, smoked a pipe, carried weapons, and frequented London’s taverns, theatres, prisons and c ...Show more