Of the many executions ordered by Henry VIII, surely the most horrifying was that of sixty-seven-year-old Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, hacked to pieces on the scaffold by a blundering headsman.
The Dramatic Rise & Fall of Thomas Cromwell Thomas Cromwell, chief architect of the English Reformation, served as principal minister of Henry VIII from 1532 to 1540, the most tumultuous period in Henry's thirty-seven year reign.
For a King renowned for his love life, Henry VIII has traditionally been depicted as something of a prude, but the story may have been different for the women who shared his bed.
The Tudor Age began in August 1485 when Henry Tudor landed with a small force at Milford Haven intent on snatching the English throne from Richard III.
The story of Henry VIII and his six wives has passed from history into legend - taught in the cradle as a cautionary tale and remembered in adulthood as an object lesson in the dangers of marrying into royalty.
Katharine of Aragon was a central figure in one of the most dramatic and formative events of Tudor history - England's breach with Rome after a thousand years of fidelity.
On 4 July 1187 the legendary Muslim leader Saladin destroyed the Crusader army of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem with a terrible slaughter at the battle of Hattin - and went on to restore the Holy City of Jerusalem to Islamic rule.
On 4 July 1187 the legendary Muslim leader Saladin destroyed the Crusader army of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem with a terrible slaughter at the battle of Hattin - and went on to restore the Holy City of Jerusalem to Islamic rule.
A tale of decadence and excess, great houses and wild parties, love and sexual intrigue, this biography of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, casts an astonishing new light on the nobility of eighteenth-century England.
Mary Tudor has always been known as 'Bloody Mary', the name given to her by later Protestant chroniclers who vilified her for attempting to re-impose Roman Catholicism in England.
A tremendously vivid, page-turning and plausible novel that depicts the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn, the most spirited, independent and courageous of Henry's queens, as viewed from both the bedrooms and the kitchens of the Tudor court.
The reports and despatches of Eustace Chapuys, Spanish Ambassador to Henry VIII's court from 1529 to 1545, have been instrumental in shaping our modern interpretations of Henry VIII and his wives.
Although the Seymours arrived with the Normans, it is with Jane, Henry VIII's third queen, and her brothers - Edward, Duke of Somerset, and Thomas, Lord Seymour of Sudeley - that they became prominent.
Scandalous Liaisons tells the story of the most hedonistic, loose-living court in English history, from Charles II's youthful years and mistresses in France, to his tempestuous relationship with the hot-tempered, sexually and financially voracious Barbara Villiers.
On 30 April 1665, the diarist Samuel Pepys recorded the first rumours that the bubonic plague was spreading through London: 'Great fears of the sickness here in the City - God preserve us all!
