Portrait of King Henry VIII, Jane Seymour and Prince Edward. (Photo by Getty Images)

Tudor

In c1500, the young Thomas Cromwell travelled from his humble Putney home to the great cities of Italy, as shown in our illustration. The connections he established on the Italian peninsula would prove key to his meteoric rise to power back in England. (Illustration by Sarah Young for BBC History Magazine)

Thomas Cromwell: the best Italian in all England.

Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall. (BBC Pictures)

Does historical accuracy really matter in period dramas like Wolf Hall?.

A half-hour history of Europe.

An illustration showing the last moments of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the explorer, soldier and half-brother of Sir Walter Ralegh. (Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

The Tudor guide to colonising the world.

A battle of Flodden memorial statue of one of the Hawick Callants on horseback, raising the captured banner aloft in triumph. Hawick, Roxburghshire, Scotland. (Getty Images)

History explorer: the battle of Flodden.

General prehistory

12 historical places to visit on the August bank holiday weekend

The first baby is born to English settlers in the Americas. (Illustration by Lynn Hatzius)

A big day in history: the first baby is born to English settlers in the Americas.

Sunset over the causeway to St Michael's Mount, Marazion, Cornwall, England (Getty Images)

9 places associated with the Prayer Book Rebellion.

Elizabeth I podcast

Inside the mind of Elizabeth I.

Portrait of Jane Seymour, third wife of Henry VIII, 1536. (Photo by Imagno/Getty Images)

Henry VIII's six wives in a different light.

The blue-robed Henry VII pictured performing a variety of tasks at the Tower of London following his accession to the throne, in a contemporary illustration. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

Bosworth: the dawn of the Tudors.

A woodcut print depicting the stocks, a form of Elizabethan punishment. Dated 16th century. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

"Damn your blood": Swearing in early modern English

Henry VIII. Portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1540. The painting has the inscription 'Anno Aetatis suae XLIX' (His year of age, 49)’. Palazzo Barberini, Rome, Italy. (Photo by PHAS/UIG via Getty Images)

Henry VIII: 5 places you (probably) didn’t know shaped his life.

Portrait of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. (Photo by Ken Welsh/Design Pics/Corbis via Getty Images)

Princely pleasures at Kenilworth: Robert Dudley's three-week marriage proposal to Elizabeth I.

In this painting from c1650, a witch wields a broomstick as demons and 'familiars' (helpers of witches) congregate before her. (Photo by Rischgitz/Getty Images)

History quiz – witchcraft and superstition.

Keith Thomas. (Photo by Fran Monks)

Books interview with Keith Thomas: “The world was divided into the ‘civil’ and the ‘barbarous’”.

Jane Seymour: Henry VIII’s favourite queen.

3 of the most famous royal weddings in history

The future Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, at Buckingham Palace following their wedding, 20 November 1947. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Royal wedding traditions through history: etiquette, menus and the dress code.

Elizabeth Woodville and Edward IV

When royals marry ‘commoners’: a brief history.

11 shocking moments in history

500 years of medicine.

Lauren Mackay

8 of Britain’s best historical houses and gardens

Hans Holbein the Younger’s portrait of Henry VIII, c1537. Henry’s clash with the church was, says George Bernard, the most significant episode of the Tudor era and transformed England’s relationship with continental Europe. (Photo by Print Collector/Getty Images)

The LibraryHenry VIII and the scourge of papal power

A crowned Tudor rose. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Stringer via Getty Images)

Why the Tudors grab us.

The ‘Princes in the Tower’

The 5 greatest mysteries behind the Wars of the Roses.

Shakespeare’s best (or worst) villains.

8 of Britain’s best battlefields.

Henry VIII “regarded his wars as the worthy successors of the great martial victories of England’s past”, says Steven Gunn. (Photo by PHAS/UIG via Getty Images)

The LibraryTotal war in Tudor England.