Elizabeth I

J. Hurstfield analyses social conditions in the Elizabethan age.

From Stubbes' angry Anatomie of Abuses, Sydney Carter unveils a revealing portrait of Elizabethan fashions and pastimes, from high-heeled shoes to football, and from ruffs to dicing and dancing.

Member of Parliament, friend of Philip Sidney, local historian, and promoter of American colonization, Richard Carew was one of the important provincial figures of his age, as F.E. Halliday here describes.

Mathew Lyons finds stimulation in an allusive article on Sir Walter Ralegh, first published in History Today in 1998.

Judith Richards strips away the veils of illusion covering the last Tudor monarch.

Stephen Alford admires a perceptive article on Lord Burghley, Elizabeth I’s ally and consummate political fixer, by the distinguished Tudor historian Joel Hurstfield, first published in the 1956 volume of History Today.

Joel Hurstfield's pen portrait of William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (1520-98) appeared in History Today in December 1956.

Retha Warnicke investigates one of the key questions of Tudor England: why did queen Elizabeth I never marry?

The idea of a female monarch was met with hostility in medieval England; in the 12th century Matilda’s claim to the throne had led to a long and bitter civil war. But the death of Edward VI in 1553 offered new opportunities for queenship, as Helen Castor explains.

Sarah Gristwood on the complex issues raised by the restoration of a remarkable Tudor vision of victory over the Spanish Armada.