Book review – Tudor history
The great Tudor catfight
Apart from glorying in a memorable name, Lettice Knollys has chiefly been known for her connections — with her second…
Power slips from Gloriana’s jewelled fingers
If you’ve been watching Game of Thrones recently, you’ll have seen an old folkloric fantasy in which a bewitching young…
When English Catholics were considered as dangerous as jihadis
Martyrdom, these days, does not get a good press. Fifty years ago English Catholics could take a ghoulish pride in…
Elizabeth I, queen of the waiting game
Women are ‘foolish, wanton flibbergibs, in every way doltified with the dregs of the devil’s dunghill’. So a cleric reminded…
Thomas Cromwell: more Tony Soprano than Richard Dawkins
The travel writer Colin Thubron once told me that to understand a country and its people he first asks, ‘What…
