Elizabethan

In November 1558 the young Elizabeth became queen of England. Norman Jones looks at evidence from the state papers to show how those close to her viewed the challenges faced in the early days by Elizabethan England.

Michael Morrogh sees value in historical films, despite their evident imperfections.

Marie Rowlands charts the changing fortunes of a religious minority.

Did it matter that the fifth Tudor monarch was a woman rather than a man? Retha Warnicke investigates.

R. E. Foster surveys the changing interpretations and introduces the key facts.

Patricia Pierce finds out about the two men responsible for publishing Shakespeare’s First Folio.

R. E. Foster reconsiders the origins of the Church Settlement of 1559.

A Tudor portrait in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, once believed to be Mary I when princess, has recently been relabelled ‘Possibly Lady Jane Grey’ as the result of research by Ph.D student J. Stephan Edwards. Here he explains how the iconography in the painting prompted the discovery.

At court, the twelve days of Christmas were a time for politics, intrigue and manoeuvre as well as for merry-making. Leanda de Lisle explores the mixed feelings induced in a courtier embroiled in the great affairs of the day, by two very different Christmases, just twelve months apart.

Jonathan Hughes discovers the humanity of Thomas Charnock, a forgotten Elizabethan alchemist in search of the philosopher’s stone.