Tudor life

The Tudor era lasted from 1485 – when Henry VII defeated the Yorkist king Richard III at the battle of Bosworth – until the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603. So what was life like during Tudor times?

Hever Castle, Anne Boleyn's childhood home in Kent. (Photo by Prisma Bildagentur/UIG via Getty Images)

8 must-visit castles with Tudor connections

The Armada Portrait of Elizabeth I. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

5 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Tudors

Musician and dancing fool in Paris, 14th century. (Christophel Fine Art/UIG via Getty Images)

What was life like for a court jester?

English countrywoman (right) with a lady of the court. From ‘Civitates Orbis Terrarum’, 1572. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Tudor women: what was life like?

A memorial tomb to King Æthelstan, the first Saxon king of all England, in Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire. (Photo by Geography Photos/UIG via Getty Images)

A brief history of England

How did Henry VIII and Elizabeth I celebrate Yuletide? (Illustration by Becca Thorne for BBC History Magazine)

Tales from a Tudor Christmas

First built in 1576, the Globe theatre burnt to the ground in 1613. During a performance of the play now known as 'Henry VIII', a set of stage cannons were fired and a piece of flaming material from one of the cannons landed on the theatre’s thatched roof, causing the fire. (Photo by Time Life Pictures/Mansell/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

5 facts about Shakespeare’s Globe theatre

Anne Boleyn was executed on 19 May 1536. (Photo by World History Archive/Alamy)

Tudor timeline: 10 momentous dates

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

The Library Why the Tudors grab us

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 Library Total war in Tudor England

John Blanke. (Illustration: Rose Wilkinson for BBC History Magazine)

The Library Black faces of Tudor England

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Black Tudors

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Life in Tudor London

A view of Hampton Court Palace, London. (Getty Images)

Simon Thurley on the architectural history of the Tudors