Tudors

While house-hunting in 1597, William Shakespeare would have known the handsome pub opposite his New Place. The Falcon was not a five-minute walk from Shakespeare’s Birthplace and across the road from Shakespeare’s Schoolroom. The world-class theatres built...

With Tudor Times we profile a different figure every month. Here, Melita Thomas explores King Henry VIII’s first love, Katharine of Aragon.

We tour four Tudor houses impeccably preserved by the National Trust and full of fascinating historical detail An age of ease and prosperity, the Tudor period saw a frenzy of competitive building: lavish, even ostentatious,...

Diplomat, councillor and possible spy Sir James Melville was a fascinating Tudor Words: Melita Thomas Sir James Melville came from a Protestant family in Fife, Scotland. His father was executed for treason – for revealing the dispositions...

Lord Robert Dudley had a passionate affair with Elizabeth I. Melita Thomas of Tudor Times explores why the queen didn't marry him and what happened to their relationship Lord Robert Dudley was the love of...

The Tudor age was a tumultuous period of history that did much to shape modern Britain as we know it. Here Melita Thomas, of the Tudor Times, selects the 10 most influential men and woman of that era.

Unfinished portrait of controversial 16th-century queen Mary Stuart found under painting of Sir John Maitland. The picture may have been painted and then covered up in dangerous times A rare portrait of Mary, Queen of...

The life of Mary, Queen of Scots was dramatic. From the day her father died, when she was a week old, to her death at the hands of an English executioner 45 years later,...

Mary Sidney was one of the most significant female literary figures of the Renaissance, say Tudor Times Mary Sidney is remembered not only for her own work, of which probably only a part remains, but...

Queen Elizabeth I presided over an age of discovery that saw the establishment of the English Protestant church, the defeat of the Spanish Armada and the flourishing of the arts. She reigned from 1558-1603  The...