Derek Wilson

Foreign traders were attracted to the City of London by England’s prosperous trade in wool and cloth. They were not always made welcome. 

Derek Wilson explores the Prebendaries Plot against Henry VIII’s reforming archbishop.

Derek Wilson looks at Henry Tudor’s long period of exile and asks what influence it had on his exercise of power following his seizure of the English throne in 1485.

Derek Wilson welcomes the emergence from the shadows of Thomas Cromwell, thanks to Hilary Mantel’s prize-winning historical novels.

Derek Wilson looks at the life of a French princess, who married and helped depose an English king during a tumultuous period of Anglo-French relations that was to end in the Hundred Years War.

Four hundred years after it was first published, the Authorised Version of the Bible remains hugely influential, especially in the US. Derek Wilson examines its origins and its legacy.

For most of Britain’s population, the Restoration had little effect. Life under Charles II was much the same as it was under Cromwell, argues Derek Wilson.

Wallowing in misery over this admittedly awful year betrays a lack of historical perspective, argues Derek Wilson.

In 1709 Russia emerged as a major power after a clash of armies in Ukraine. Peter the Great’s victory, Derek Wilson argues, had repercussions that last to this day.

Derek Wilson looks at the great religious reformer and asks why his life and work have seemed so ­significant to so many diverse people for almost 500 years.