Five things you (probably) didn’t know about… the elizabethans

Shortly after the queen rose on 10 June 1688, she felt a familiar swell of pain. “Send for the king!” she called, while her ladies helped her back into bed. Maria (Mary) of Modena was in labour. Soon

In July 1575, Robert Dudley enlisted mythological figures to convince Elizabeth I to wed him. Exactly 450 years later, artist Lindsey Mendick reveals how and why she reinterpreted their encounter in her installation for Kenilworth Castle

In her latest novel, Sarah Dunant explores the life of Italian aristocrat Isabella d’Este, the archetypal Renaissance woman

Few objects in the long history of the Catholic church stir the imagination quite like the fabled sedia stercoraria. With a name that roughly translates as ‘dung chair’, the myth of the so-called papa

Different ways of dying across the British Isles

IT IS A TRUTH UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED, THAT EVERY HOME MUST BE IN WANT OF CHARACTER, WRITES TALLULAH RUSHAYA