Eight kings of England were the named Henry, but only two of them were born as heirs to the throne and these - the third and sixth - proved to be the weakest.
Four generations of Brandon men lived and served six English kings, the most famous being Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, best friend and brother-in-law to King Henry VIII.
Europe in the 1500s and 1600s was an ascending, expanding civilisation, poised to become globally dominant, and destined to produce the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution.
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.
Anne Boleyn's unconventional beauty inspired poets - and she so entranced Henry VIII with her wit, allure and style that he was prepared to set aside his wife of over twenty years and risk his immortal soul.
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.
Richard III is probably the House of York's best-known figure, but the other members of the family are just as intriguing as the king who fell on Bosworth Field.
Opening with a look at a Cambridge play satirising Shakespeare in his own time, we follow Cambridge's part in Shakespeare appreciation through the centuries.
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.
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.
Thomas Cromwell, the king's Principal Secretary, Mark Smeaton, court songster and musician, and Henry VIII are all caught up in Anne Boleyn's catastrophic fall from power and grisly death.
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.
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!
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.
Within the stunning eighteenth-century park of Studley Royal in Yorkshire, lie the ruinous remains of Fountains Abbey - one of the finest examples of Cistercian architecture in Europe.
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.
