European history: Renaissance

Mary Tudor's childhood was overshadowed by the men in her life: her father, Henry VII, and her brothers Arthur, heir to the Tudor throne, and 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.

Evidence of the foulness and cruelty of the greatest catastrophe ever to hit London is still being unearthed under the streets of the capital today.

A dynasty is defined by its men: by their personalities, their wars and reigns, their laws and decisions.

Catherine of Aragon continues to fascinate readers 500 years after she became Henry VIII's first queen.

William Shakespeare is the world's best-loved playwright.

Mary, Queen of Scots is one of the great tragic figures of British history.

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.

Who wrote the works of Shakespeare?

'The Welsh habit of revolt against the English is an old-standing madness .

Have you ever wondered what the Tudors ate?

Tudor London was a vibrant capital city, the very hub of English cultural and political life.

British history is rich in enthralling stories: pivotal moments that changed the future of the country; moments of drama, suspense, intrigue.

The Tudor Period is regarded by many as England's golden age, and still casts a spell over the public imagination.

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.

Henry VIII had the most controversial love life of the Tudor period, and he remains Britain's most famous king because of it.

In 1562, Elizabeth I, the last of Henry VIII's children, lay dying of smallpox, and the curse of the Tudor succession again reared its head.

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.

Did you ever wonder what the Tudors ate and drank?

During the early part of the sixteenth century England should have been ruled by King Arthur Tudor, not Henry VIII.

The Wars of the Roses saw family fight family over the greatest prize - the throne of England.

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.

It has been 400 years since William Shakespeare, the man heralded as the greatest writer in the English language and England's national poet, died.

Henry Tudor, the future Henry VII, has been called the most unlikely King of England.

The Reformation is one of the most important events in world history.

Sir Thomas Chaloner achieved much during his short life.

We don't really consider Henry VIII to have had friends, rather subjects, cronies and dutiful wives and ministers of state.

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.

In 1533, Katherine Willoughby married Charles Brandon, Henry VIII's closest friend.

The Tudor Family is the most intriguing royal dynasty in British history.

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.

Follow in the footsteps of Anne Boleyn from Hever Castle, to Richmond Palace and ultimately to the Tower of London.

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 Wars of the Roses were a bitter and bloody dispute between the rival Plantagenet Houses of York and Lancaster.

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.

In recent times, globalisation has made the world more interdependent than ever before.

The six monarchs of the Tudor dynasty are phenomenally well known.

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.

Amelia Bassano was born in 1569 into a family of Venetian Jews who were court musicians to Queen Elizabeth I.

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.

As Tudors go, Elizabeth of York is relatively unknown.

The story of Anne Boleyn goes to the root of all history; what makes an individual or event memorable to later generations?

EIGHT GENERATIONS OF BOLEYN WOMEN FROM THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY TO 1603The Boleyn family appeared from nowhere at the end of the fourteenth century, moving from peasant to princess in only a few generations.

The Tudors are one of history's most infamous families and the era over which they reigned still captures the public's interest without rival.

Henry's fifth queen is best known to history as the stupid adolescent who got herself fatally entangled with lovers and ended up on the block.

During the late 1980s, a collection of sixteenth-century merchant letters appeared for sale.