Learn what went on behind closed doors in the Tudor court. Illegitimate children, adulterous queens, impotent kings, and a whole dynasty resting on their shoulders. Sex and childbirth were quite literally a matter of life or death for the Tudors - Elizabeth of York died in childbirth, two of Henry VIII's queens were beheaded for infidelity, and Elizabeth I's elective virginity signalled the demise of a dynasty. Amy Licence guides the reader through the births of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York's two sons, Arthur and Henry, Catherine of Aragon's subsequent marriages to both of these men, Henry...

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. How did they take the leap from courtier to lover - perhaps even to wife? What was Henry really like as a lover? Henry's women were uniquely placed to experience the tension between his chivalric ideals and the lusts of the handsome, tall, athletic king; his first marriage, to Catherine of Aragon, was on one level a fairytale romance, but his affairs with Anne Stafford, Elizabeth Carew and Jane Popincourt undermined...

Sisters Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf have long been celebrated for their central roles in the development of modernism in art and literature. Vanessa's experimental work places her at the vanguard of early twentieth-century art, as does her role in helping introduce many key names - Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso - to an unsuspecting public in 1910. Virginia took these artistic innovations and applied them to literature, pushing the boundaries of form, narrative and language to find a voice uniquely her own. Yet their private lives were just as experimental. Vanessa's marriage to art critic...

When the tall, athletic Edward of York seized the English throne in 1461, he could have chosen any bride he wanted. With his dazzling good looks, few were able to resist his charm and promises. For three years he had a succession of mistresses, while foreign princesses were lined up to be considered for his queen. Then he fell in love. Enter Elizabeth Woodville, a widow five years his elder. While her contemporaries and later historians have been divided over her character, none have denied her beauty. When she petitioned the king to help restore her son's inheritance, the young Edward was...

The five hundredth anniversary of a momentous and spectacular meeting between two rival Renaissance monarchs; a failed bid for peace in Europe.

The life of Honor, Lady Lisle, follows a dizzying narrative arc. Born into a West Country family, her second marriage propelled her into Anne Boleyn's court, as the new step-aunt to Henry VIII.  Her husband, Arthur, was the illegitimate son of Edward IV, bearing the dangerous surname Plantagenet, one of a few survivors of the old regime. At his side, Honor witnessed tumultuous change in England, before heading out to run the Tudor enclave of Calais. Her surviving letters speak of a happy family, domestic arrangements, clothes and food, as well as including snippets of news about Henry's...