Elizabeth I
Could anyone be trusted in Tudor and Stuart England?
An investigation of the codes, disguises and invisible inks used by plotters and spymasters captures the paranoia of an age when secret messages could be hidden anywhere
From Cleopatra to Elizabeth Taylor, women have found jewels irresistible
Helen Molesworth has produced a magnificent history of gemstones – their symbolism, provenance, and the legends surrounding the best ones
Four female writers at the court of Elizabeth I
Of Ramie Targoff’s gifted quartet, Mary Sidney was particularly admired by her contemporaries for her translation of the Psalms into English verse
A dangerous balancing act
Thomas Cromwell’s biographer Diarmaid MacCulloch once told me that my father’s family, the Dormers, had been servants of the great…
Ignoble ambitions
This is the gripping story of the ever-fluctuating fortunes of three generations of the Dudley dynasty, servants to — and…
The best of the Stuarts
Many girls dream about their favourite princesses. Elizabeth Stuart, a princess herself, took this fantasy a step further and modelled…
Fears of popery
Stuart England did not do its anti-Catholicism by halves. In the late 1670s and early 1680s, a popular feature of…
A delicate bargain
This very readable account of relations between the British intelligence services and the Crown does more than it says on…
Hogsflesh and herring
Wilhelm Nero Pilate Barbellion, real name Bruce Frederick Cummings, earned his living measuring the legs of lice in the Natural…
The first great English artist – the life and art of Nicholas Hilliard
When Henry VIII died in 1547, he left a religiously divided country to a young iconoclast who erased a large…
A slog – and why does Elizabeth look like Ronald McDonald? Mary Queen of Scots reviewed
Mary Queen of Scots is a historical costume drama that, unlike The Favourite, does not breathe new life into the…
![The Earl of Southampton, to whom Shakespeare dedicated ‘The Rape of Lucrece’. [Getty]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/The_Earl_of_Southampton.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Shakespeare as political pamphleteer
Shakespeare’s Rape of Lucrece is a puzzling and often terrible poem. Lucrece, the devout wife of Collatine, is raped by…
Join a Jacobean jury at the Globe. Early modern theatre goes immersive – will it work?
James I and VI liked to term himself Rex Pacificus. Like most politicians who talk a lot about working for…
The great Tudor catfight
Apart from glorying in a memorable name, Lettice Knollys has chiefly been known for her connections — with her second…
Courting Sultana Isabel
The idea for a mechanical cock was never going to work. In 1595 the English ambassador to Constantinople, Edward Barton,…
Away with the angels?
John Dee liked to talk to spirits but he was no loony witch, says Christopher Howse
Off the page
Dance has its own archaeological periods, and 2016’s schedules are confirming what 2015 indicated — that the era of dances…
Curiosities for Christmas
There is not, sadly, a dedicated Trivia Books section in your local Waterstones, although at this time of year there…
Living history
It has been a while since the BBC really pushed the boat out on the epic history documentary front. Perhaps…
Gloriana waits and sees
Women are ‘foolish, wanton flibbergibs, in every way doltified with the dregs of the devil’s dunghill’. So a cleric reminded…
Roll out the barrel
‘He was a wise man who invented beer,’ said Plato, although I imagine he had changed his mind by the…
History’s great success story
The Tudors, England’s most glamorous ruling dynasty, were self-invented parvenus, with ‘vile and barbarous’ origins, Anne Somerset reminds us
