This in-depth special edition looks at how the era of exploration, entertainment and empire had a darker side, where poverty, violence and persecution plagued the lives of ordinary people.
Discover:
- Fresh perspectives on Elizabeth I and her court - The daily lives of ordinary people - A new era of public entertainment - An age of exploration and adventure
The Story of the Elizabethans
WELCOME
The Elizabethan age • Susan Doran explores the key events that marked the long reign of England’s ‘Virgin Queen’
ELIZABETHAN LIVES
The other Elizabethan England • Films, books and television depict the queen and court in their finery – but what of the lives of ‘ordinary’ Elizabethans? Tarnya Cooper reveals what eight objects tell us about the homes, work and play of people both rich and poor
The play’s one thing… • Elizabeth’s reign is renowned as the dawn of English theatre, when timeless talents such as Shakespeare and Marlowe emerged. But as James Sharpe reveals, a host of other entertainments and pastimes were available to rich and poor
HOLD YOUR NOSES… IT’S THE ELIZABETHANS! • Ian Mortimer prepares prospective time travellers for the sights, sounds, smells and tastes that await them in the 16th century
The visual world • Darkness reigns in a era when only the rich can afford glass
The aural experience • Bells and bagpipes shatter the silence
The olfactory landscape • The wealthy wash themselves daily; the masses go ilthy
Feeling your way • Visiting the surgeon could prove a real pain
Good and bad taste • Hunger turns everyone into a foodie
Fear and loathing • Terror stalks an age of plague and paranoia
The dark side of Elizabethan life • The Elizabethan era is often painted as a golden age. Yet, says James Sharpe, for many thousands of people life was far from golden, blighted by violence, vagrancy and crushing hunger
GREAT PALACES OF ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND • Tracy Borman tours six of the Tudor era’s nest palaces and halls – and reveals the secrets of these architectural marvels
THE QUEEN & HER COURT
THE HISTORY ESSAY PERSONAL POLITICS IN ELIZABETH’S COURT • The Virgin Queen’s possessive treatment of her favourite advisors and maids of honour was driven more by political motives than by petty jealousy
Lettice Knollys was a favourite of Elizabeth I… Then she stole the queen’s sweetheart • Nicola Tallis tells the story of a Tudor love triangle
The countess, the courtier and the queen • The three players in the love triangle that scandalised the Tudor court
THE UNFATHOMABLE QUEEN • From an early age, Elizabeth I was a master of hiding her true emotions. Helen Castor attempts to decipher what the monarch was really thinking behind that inscrutable visage
THE QUEEN’S DAY • Anna Whitelock reveals how Elizabeth I used celebrations marking the anniversary of her accession as a weapon in her war against the Catholic threat to her throne
The royal sweetheart and the three-week marriage proposal • A ernearly15yearsoftryingtowin the queen’s hand, Robert Dudley made a last-ditch attempt to seal his suit. Elizabeth Goldring explores the ‘princely pleasures’ orchestrated by the man described as Elizabeth’s one great love
ELIZABETHANS & THE WORLD
Elizabeth’s war with England’s Catholics • In Elizabethan England, Catholics were branded public enemies, their Masses banned and their priests executed. Jessie Childs reveals what life was like for recusants and ‘church papists’ in a hostile Protestant state
Catholic attempts on the queen’s life • Elizabeth’s advisors foiled a series of assassination plots
Places to visit • Catholic ingenuity in architecture around England
WALTER...