Suzannah Lipscomb's Blog, page 3

The Last Days of Anne Boleyn

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BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour

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Shining a Light on Darkness

Sexual exploitation by powerful men has a long history. Will it ever end? Suzannah’s bimonthly ‘Making History’ column for History Today: The revelations about Harvey Weinstein and those of other men who used their privilege for the sexual exploitation of women – and men – with less power than themselves, feels as if it has woken […]

A Rich Harvest of Formats

In a diverse field, expertise should remain at the heart of history on television. Suzannah’s bimonthly ‘Making History’ column for History Today: In late 2017, the Royal Television Society staged a ‘Great History Debate’. A panel, chaired by Tony Robinson of Blackadder fame included the presenter and historian David Olusoga; Tom McDonald, the BBC’s Head of […]

A Kinder, Gentler History

The past can seem like a timeline of horrors. But might it also remind us of our own failings – and help to put them right? Suzannah’s bimonthly ‘Making History’ column for History Today: Reading history, one can often get a sense of being shown an endless parade of human savagery, as people fought and betrayed each […]

Playing with Fire

A review of Anders Lustgarten’s ‘The Secret Theatre’ in The Times Literary Supplement: At 40 by 55 feet, the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is just a little smaller than the hall playhouse established by James Burbage at the Blackfriars in the 1590s. Otherwise, this vertiginous, intimate, almost claustrophobic little theatre, playing to three levels of galleries […]

Silenced Voices

An article for The Times Literary Supplement. Most of the women who have ever lived left no trace of their existence on the record of history. In sixteenth-century Europe, it is likely that no more than 5 per cent of women – at most – were literate; ordinary women left no letters, diaries, or notebooks in […]

Clime, complexion and degree

A review of Miranda Kaufmann’s Black Tudors: The untold story for The Times Literary Supplement. In August 1600, Abd-al-Wahid bin Masoud bin Muhammad al-Annuri arrived in England as an ambassador from Morocco and stayed in the Strand in London for six months, having his portrait painted as he waited to meet Queen Elizabeth I. His was not […]

Something More Than An Art

Both history and historical fiction depend on a combination of imagination and rigorous research. The difference is found in the balance of these ingredients. Suzannah’s bimonthly ‘Making History’ column for History Today: Hilary Mantel, in her formidably brilliant Reith Lectures, has set out to remind us of the unknowability of the past: unknowable because of the partiality […]

Elizabeth I, Anne Boleyn, and the Ashbourne Charter of 1585

  On 17 July 1585, the people of Ashbourne in Derbyshire were granted a charter by Queen Elizabeth I for the founding of a Free Grammar School. The Queen, via Sir Francis Walsingham, had been petitioned two years earlier for the founding of a school, noting that ‘for wante of scholes the youthe of that […]