In the latest episode of The Royal Beat, Kate Thornton and guests discuss the accuracy of Bridgerton, the upcoming film Spencer about Princess Diana’s life as well as looking at the latest in Meghan’s legal action against the Mail on Sunday.
Writer Tracy Borman explores the life of Elizabeth I, looking into her relationships with her closest attendants and her attitudes to, and treatment of, other women as well as her erotically charged love affairs and her love of tooth-rotting sugar.
Historian Tracy Borman takes us behind the closed doors of the Tudor court where sex and power and the very architecture of the palaces created a febrile, hothouse atmosphere in which scandals erupted on an almost daily basis.
Historian Tracy Borman reveals intimate details about the tyrannical Henry VIII and his six wives: from how they lived, loved and died to the most minute of details of their everyday lives.
Prince Charles Edward was Queen Victoria’s favourite grandson.At the age of 16 he was ordered to Germany by his grandmother where he was transformed from a British Prince into a German Duke.
At the outbreak of the First World War, Prince Charles Edward had no option but to fight for Germany aga...
Queen Victoria may have given the English Crown back its shine and spread her sway throughout the Empire, but what of the woman who gave birth to nine children and survived seven assassination attempts? With her diaries burned by her daughter following her death, we turn to her personal letters t...
Lucy Worsley continues her journey through Russia in the footsteps of the Romanovs, the most powerful royal dynasty in modern European history.
In this episode she examines the extraordinary reign of Catherine the Great, and the traumatic conflict with Napoleonic France that provides the setting...
Lucy Worsley travels to Russia to tell the extraordinary story of the dynasty that ruled the country for more than three centuries. It's an epic tale that includes giant figures such as Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, the devastating struggle against Napoleon in 1812, and the political m...
Lucy Worsley concludes her history of the Romanov dynasty, investigating how the family's grip on Russia unravelled in their final century. She will show how the years 1825-1918 were bloody and traumatic, a period when four tsars tried - and failed - to deal with the growing pressure for constitu...
King Charles I succeeded his father James I in 1625 from when political and religious upheaval dogged his reign before his authoritarian rule eventually led to civil war and ultimately his execution.
Following the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603, King James VI of Scotland claimed her throne along with a new title: King James I of England.
During his bloody reign he faced numerous attempts on his life including the nefarious Gunpowder Plot and the continuing 30 years war on the continent.
Oliver Cromwell's commonwealth came to an end soon after his death and, in 1660, the exiled King, Charles, returned to London with an enormous fanfare only to face the dual tragedies of the worst outbreak of plague in generations and the Great Fire of London.
In 1685 King James II succeeded his brother to the throne. As the last of the Stuart Kings he would reign for only 3 years until none other than his own daughter, Mary, brought about his downfall.
Guy Fawkes’ plan to blow up the Houses of Parliament and kill the King will live forever as one of history’s most audacious acts of treason. After an eleventh hour tip-off, the plotters were discovered, tortured and executed. Superb recreations and reconstructions tell the full dramatic story.
He was the last King of America and the first of Australia, a champion of science art and music whose reign ushered in the industrial revolution and whose political battles helped shape the monarchy today.
And yet George III will forever be remembered as The King Who Went Mad.
On a freezing January day in 1649, the executioner’s axe ended the reign and the life of King Charles I. It was the final melancholy episode in one of England’s saddest stories. Sent to his death by a Parliament weary of his duplicity, the King met his end with dignity and courage. Behind him he ...
The weeks after the Battle of Edgehill in October 1642 provided King Charles with perhaps his only chance of winning the Civil War outright. He failed to take it. By November, the Parliamentary army under Essex had managed to slip past the Royalist forces outside London to regain the city, while ...
The Battle of Naseby in June 1645 was followed by almost three years of hard and bitter fighting. After the calamitous Royalist defeat, the determination that had sustained the King's cause thus far had all but disappeared. Only the Royalist cavalry had escaped from Naseby; the remainder of the K...
The execution of King Charles in January 1649 was not the final chapter in one of Britain's most tragic stories. If the people of the British Isles imagined a new era of peace and stability, they were to be sorely disappointed.
The fascinating story of how an insignificant and poverty stricken - but deeply ambitious - underdog amongst Europe's aristocratic houses managed to manoeuvre its children onto thrones across the world from Norway to Portugal, Britain, Greece, Sweden and Bulgaria.
From state affairs to family gossip, Queen Victoria poured her emotions into her diaries with such honesty that those close to her were afraid lest her more alarming opinions escape and prove catastrophic for the young Queen. Indeed, after her death many of her diaries were burned by her own daug...
Although deeply in love with her husband, Victoria often felt constrained by Prince Albert. In an era when it was unusual for a gentleman to default to his wife, it was felt he used her pregnancies as a way to gain power. After his death Victoria was bereft but, as her diaries show, also became f...
An intriguing portrait of one of the people closest to the tragic queen.
A fascinating look at one of the people closest to the tragic queen through her final hours. Is she, in fact, one of history's most misunderstood characters?
