This is History: The Tudors

Henry VII’s reign starts with dirty feet and a dirty little problem.

Fresh from the Battle of Bosworth, Henry Tudor is trying to sell England on his brand-new dynasty. Tasks include: marry the right princess, rewrite the rules, invent a royal myth and hope nobody notices the joins. 

But when a diehard Ricardian slips through the net and whips up a rebellion, Henry has no time to lose. From plague-ridden London to rebellious Northern Yorkshire, the story of England’s first Tudor king begins with panic, propaganda and rapid peril. 

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Don’t fo...

He’s the man who schemed, smashed and slashed his way to power. But as it turns out, winning a crown is far easier than keeping one.

This Is History: The Tudors traces the unlikely rise of King Henry VII — the man responsible for creating England’s most iconic royal family. 

Their story begins on 22 August 1485, a day that changed English history forever.

At the Battle of Bosworth Field, Henry Tudor defeated King Richard III, ending more than three centuries of Plantagenet rule and claiming the English throne as Henry VII.

He inhe...

The story of disgruntled citizens feeling the need to rise up against a rigged system and distant elites is one that defines our moment. But we’re not unique in that feeling. Mistrust of the elite goes back a long way — like when England’s peasants almost toppled the ancien regime of King Richard II in 1381.

And that’s the focus of Oscar-nominated director Paul Greengrass’s latest film, The Uprising. Starring Andrew Garfield as a disgruntled ploughman, Cosmo Jarvis as Wat Tyler — and with our very own Dan Jones serving as historical consultant — the film takes...

Did King Arthur exist? Amy Jeffs isn't fussed. In this episode, the historian and artist behind Arthur: A New Life takes Dan Jones beyond Camelot and the search for a "real" Arthur, into a world of Welsh myth, Breton storytelling, medieval chronicles, haunted landscapes and hyperbolically violent kings.

Together, they try to understand why one of Britain's most compelling legends has endured, and why centuries of writers, artists and dreamers keep remaking him.

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If you want a deeper dive into the medieval world with Da...

Two men and two hundred years of history…

On this week’s This Is History: In Conversation, Dan Jones meets Mike Livingston — award-winning historian and novelist from across the pond — to discuss the Hundred Years War. 

A former Secretary-General for the United States Commission on Military History and professor at The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, Livingston knows a thing or two about battles. 

They delve into Livingston’s latest book ‘The Two Hundred Years War’ and discuss : when did the war actually start and end? What did the French really think about it...

Dr Harini Bhat is a clinical pharmacist and science storyteller obsessed with questions that don't have answers. Every week she unravels real events from history that still can't be fully explained. Mass hysterias. Medical oddities. Vanished civilisations. Strange signals. Unexplained phenomena that keep repeating, centuries apart, as if history is trying to tell you something.

In this episode, uncover the chilling mystery of the Mary Celeste, the infamous ‘ghost ship’ found drifting in the Atlantic in 1872 with its entire crew vanished without a trace. From explosive alcohol fumes and navigation errors to sea monsters and conspiracy theories, this...

It’s time for a Dan-off.

To celebrate the return of This Is History: In Conversation, Dan Jones meets the other history podcaster called Dan.

Dan Snow’s an award-winning historian, best-selling author, and host of Dan Snow’s History Hit.

Together, the history Dans have racked up quite a lot of air miles, and in this special episode, they discuss their FAVOURITE destinations teeming with historical intrigue.

From the water meadows that birthed the Magna Carta, to the myster...

Richard III’s son and heir, Edward of Middleham, dies unexpectedly. Then tragedy strikes twice: his wife Queen Anne dies, too. 

Richard, who ruthlessly diverted the line of succession away from his nephews, now has to contend with a dynastic line reset to zero. 

His solution? Incest. 

His niece, Elizabeth of York — daughter of late King Edward IV — is being pitched as England’s new Queen. But thrusting incest onto an increasingly agitated kingdom isn’t exactly what the people want. 

It’s fertile ground for other nobles who have any claim to the thr...

*THIS IS HISTORY — A DYNASTY TO DIE FOR* 

*Season 10, Episode 11: Last Hope*

It’s 1482.  Margaret Beaufort and her husband, Thomas Stanley hold the most power in Northwest England…and they’re hungry for more.

They’ve asked their pal, King Edward IV, to organise a royal pardon for their exiled son, Henry Tudor, who’s in Brittany. The aim? To marry Edward’s daughter, Elizabeth of York and claim the crown.

But… there's a problem. Richard III has seized the throne, reversed Henry’s pardon and induced nationwide mayhem. 

Backed by Francis, Du...

Richard Duke of Gloucester has the crown in his sights. But first, he needs to clear the room. 

Allies become enemies. Councillors are arrested. Lord Hastings is dead. And Edward IV’s heirs are locked in the Tower of London.  Then Richard needs to sell himself.

A preacher declares Edward IV’s children illegitimate while Richard positions himself as the antidote to his brother’s salacious decadence. Richard’s going to be England’s pious, orderly, righteous king. Or so he claims. 

The heirs locked in the tower slowly slip from public view — and history has...

Edward IV finally has it all. With his enemies vanquished, the Yorkist king can now focus on what really matters to him — pleasure.

But, after one fateful fishing trip, he drops dead at 41. The kingdom is now left to his 12-year-old son, Edward V. 

It’s not like England hasn’t seen this before. After all, Henry VI ascended to the throne at nine-months-old. So the realm expects another royal council to steer things on Edward’s behalf until he gets older. And there’s a long list of nobles who are more than happy to shepherd...

A grieving George Duke of Clarence wants someone to blame for the tragic death of his wife and spare heir. 

Isabel Neville, Duchess of Clarence, dies during childbirth in December 1476. Their infant son dies shortly afterward. 

It’s a moment that would push anyone to the brink, but in George’s hands, it turns bloody. He sets his sights on two low-ranking staff members in the Clarence household, creates a kangaroo court, and sends them to the gallows. 

This act of extrajudicial killing isn’t seen as a lapse from someone wracked with grief, bu...

In 1475, nobody wants a Henry V impersonator, but Edward IV goes ahead and does his best impression anyway. 

Edward, buoyant from vanquishing his enemies at home, now wants to re-unite the kingdom against its longtime enemy: France. He wants the family heirlooms back: Normandy and Gascony. 

So he assembles the biggest army in living memory — about 13,000 strong — and launches an assault on Paris, via Calais and Agincourt. Another Duke of Burgundy allies with England, too. 

But Edward IV is no Henry V. Edward’s first allegiance is to pleasure, and it’s a fact the Fre...

The not-completely-there king, Henry VI, isn’t someone you’d associate with clarity, but in 1470, he sees something with absolute focus. After being presented with his 13-year-old namesake, Henry Tudor, he tells everyone gathered at Westminster Palace that the young Henry is ‘the one’. 

While his mother, Margaret Beaufort’s thrilled, there is a slight hitch to Henry’s apparition. There’s still an exiled Edward IV on the loose, and he’s about to launch an assault on the coalition that ejected him from the throne at the Battle of Barnet. 

It’s going to be open season on...

It’s time for a restoration, or rather, re-adeption. 

In 1470, Warwick the Kingmaker seizes his moment and slings Henry VI back onto the English throne. 

It’s fair to say the Lancastrian king doesn’t quite get the significance of this moment. He’s described by one chronicler as being nothing more than ‘a stuffed wool sack lifted by its ears’. 

But Henry makes one pliable puppet for Warwick, who makes himself the king’s lieutenant — basically England’s decision maker in chief. Lining up behind Warwick are a cast of characters who are more than happy t...

It’s a gorgeous, calculated provocation. 

In the summer of 1469, in Calais, the Earl of Warwick, marries his daughter Isabel to George, Duke of Clarence, brother and heir to King Edward IV. 

It’s another shot across the bow to Edward, who doesn’t seem to understand that the kingmaker wants him out. Within weeks, Warwick's rebels crush a royal army at Edgcote and the Kingmaker imprisons the king himself in the Tower of London. 

England collapses into anarchy. 

Warwick, humbled, is forced to release Edward. Astonishingly, he is pardoned. More astonishin...

Hey Dan here. Here’s a podcast from none other than TIH alumna, producer Georgia Mills! 

If you can’t get enough of historical failure after History’s Greatest Fails, give Cautionary Tales a listen. My royal favourites get one month free of a free subscription — look out for the gift link on our Patreon Court Gossip thread. 

In the meantime, here’s a sample episode. It’s the tale of a poet who thought his poem about the Battle of Crecy was going to rival Shakespeare… evidently, it did not. 

William McGonagall's poems are somethi...

Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick, knows there’s no such thing as a free lunch. And the best way to keep the people on your side is through their stomachs. 

It’s a lesson King Edward IV has yet to learn. After marrying for love, and starting a diplomatic thaw with Europe, Edward soon finds out that there’s really only one task that matters: keeping his most powerful subject loyal. 

So the young king allows a raid on a Hanseatic League storehouse on Warwick’s behalf, he moves his entire court to Coventry just to co...

Edward IV marries in secret, then springs the news like a trap. 

England’s new Queen, Elizabeth Woodville, arrives with two sons, a Lancastrian past, and a family ready to take their chance. When the newly-married couple introduces themselves at Reading Abbey, nobles gape. But Elizabeth takes her newfound royal status with aplomb. She stages a dazzling churching, forcing courtiers to kneel for hours. 

Elsewhere, England’s pitiable former king Henry VI is found wandering and locked quietly in the Tower. Elizabeth’s siblings are married into great royal houses at speed, tightening their grip, much to...

A 13-year-old girl labours in a sealed chamber at Pembroke Castle as the plague circles them. Miraculously, Margaret Beaufort survives. Her son does, too. His name is Henry Tudor.

This birth doesn’t register in the minds of many nobles, as they’re focused on England’s first Yorkist King, Edward IV. After his decisive victory at the Battle of Towton, his mission as king is to do what Henry VI couldn’t: rebuild a broken kingdom.

He solidifies power in concert with his ally, the Earl of Warwick, who fanc...

Hello from Dan! Don’t fret. There’s nothing happening to This Is History! I thought I’d give you a little treat ahead of Season 11 of A Dynasty to Die For. The excellent Dr Harini Bhat has kindly given you a special preview of her new podcast, Hidden History. 

She’s a clinical pharmacist and storyteller obsessed with the moments in history that still can't be fully explained. Every week she investigates real events that defy easy explanation. Mass hysterias. Vanished civilizations. Medical oddities. Strange signals. Unexplained phenomena that keep repeating across centuries, as if history is trying...

Three brothers. One crown. And no ounce of loyalty between them.

In the final Plantagenet season of A Dynasty to Die For, Dan Jones traces the spectacular implosion of a dynasty that defined medieval England.

You will meet King Edward IV, who marries for love and splits his court in half. His former champion, the Earl of Warwick, becomes a mortal enemy. Edward’s heirs mysteriously vanish in the Tower of London… just before their uncle becomes England’s last Plantagenet monarch — Richard III.

As the P...

Elizabeth Day grew up in Belfast and would as a child walk past the most bombed hotel in Europe. Dan Jones recalls a Croatian widow whose husband went out for bread and never returned.

In this final episode of History’s Greatest Fails, Dan and Elizabeth name war as history's ultimate failure and reflect on the changes that follow societal collapse.

Together, they draw on conflicts that have changed the course of world history, such as the Hundred Years' War, the World Wars, the Troubles, and the breakup of Yu...

If you’re an artist, when would you like recognition to strike? Do you want it to be in your lifetime, only to be forgotten decades after your death? Or do you want to remain undiscovered, with your story potentially echoing for centuries after you’ve been discovered posthumously?

These are some of the thorny questions Dan and Elizabeth consider in this episode about artistic failure. Together, they trace the stories of artists whose lives don’t neatly match up with the reputations their works have gathered: French writer George Sand, and the painters Vincen...

If you judge him by his own elaborate metrics, Leonardo da Vinci was a failure.

Long before the Mona Lisa became shorthand for genius, Leonardo imagined himself as something else entirely: a military engineer, a designer of bridges and armoured vehicles, a master of siegecraft and architecture.

In 1482, he wrote a breathless letter to Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, itemising these talents with bravado and noting, quickly, that oh, he could paint, too. Many of his boldest designs never left the page, or arrived centuries too early to be...

What would you do if your life was omitted, reduced to an overlooked footnote, or filed away as an anomaly?

In this episode, Dan and Elizabeth turn a lens on the practice of history itself, interrogating the choices and power structures that have traditionally left women out of the history books.

They retrace the lives of three women who once stood firmly in their moment: Hatshepsut, a pharaoh who consolidated power in Ancient Egypt; Joanna Ferrour, a peasant whose voice briefly direct the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381; and Ada Lovelace, a...

To love is to risk heartbreak.

And while for some, breakups result in renewal, maybe some therapy (or a few months’ spent wallowing), for the historical figures of this episode… a relationship’s end has broken many more things than hearts.

In this episode, Dan and Elizabeth discover the lessons of history’s epic failed romances through three world-changing unions: Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn; Mark Antony and Cleopatra; and Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson.

Each couple burned bright and fast, and with their downfall...

He died at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. And we haven’t been able to stop talking about him since.

Yes, it’s time to consider the story of England’s last Plantagenet king, Richard III — a centuries-old tangle involving alleged murder, Shakespeare, vanquish and one mighty rediscovery.

In this debut episode of History’s Greatest Fails, Dan Jones and Elizabeth Day argue that the story of Richard’s rise and fall (and rise again) is much more modern that you’d first believe. Not least because of the reality-TV-sty...

We’re often taught that history’s written by the winners. But we’d like to argue that, in fact, it’s the losers who end up making history. 

In this brand new miniseries from Dan Jones and Elizabeth Day, History’s Greatest Fails aims to answer the simple, but complex, question: Why do losers make history? 

From Richard III, to Vincent Van Gough, to the purposefully forgotten female Pharaoh Hatshepsut, this series is going to help you better understand how the idea of failure changes over time, and what lessons failure has for all of us.  

To learn more about the last time an English king was usurped, listen to Season 7, Bonus Episode 12, where Dan tells the story of Henry VI’s grandfather, Henry Bolingbroke. In 1399, he toppled Richard II to become King Henry IV. 

By 1460, England has emerged into a polycrisis. 

King Henry VI has been relegated to a pawn. His son and wife have been disinherited, with Richard, Duke of York, now heir presumptive. Violence pulses through the countryside. 

In this pivotal chapter of the Wars of the Roses, it appears that Yorkist forces have finally overwhelmed the L...

Royal favourites, we want your voice notes in our new miniseries on historical failures. Look out for Producer Al’s callout post on patreon.com/thisishistory. 

It’s there where you can listen to this week’s bonus episode, where Dan gives an explainer on Warwick's piracy, the value of Calais, and the risks of another royal usurpation. Plus, hear more about Dan’s meltdown over a parking ticket. 

All is not well in a simmering kingdom. 

Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick — a key ally of Richard Duke of York — is holding the last skerrick o...

Royal favourites, we want your voice notes in our new miniseries on historical failures. Look out for Producer Al’s callout post on patreon.com/thisishistory. 

It’s there where you can listen to this week’s bonus episode, where Dan gives you a primer on the pirate-cum-warlord, the Earl of Warwick. Plus, Dan makes good on his promise to tell the story of when he absolutely lost it over something rather inconsequential. 

All the drift and failure of Henry VI’s reign is coming home to roost. The fizzer of a king’s dodging arrows and m...

Royal favourites, we want your voice notes in our new miniseries on historical failures. Look out for Producer Al’s callout post on patreon.com/thisishistory. 

It’s there where you can listen to this week’s bonus episode, where Dan discusses what likely triggered Henry VI’s descent into silence, while he also gives a primer on England’s warring noble families: the Nevilles, Percys, and Courtenays. 

Henry VI isn’t responding to anyone. Not to his physician, nor to his newborn son, Prince Edward. He’s just inert, catatonic. 

If the king’s health is...

Royal favourites, we want your voice notes in our new miniseries on historical failures. Look out for Producer Al’s callout post on patreon.com/thisishistory. 

There you can also listen to this week’s bonus episode, where we discuss the Duke of York’s super-royal credentials, and why the Duke of Somerset fails upward. 

Henry VI’s royal court breathes a collective sigh of relief — Queen Margaret of Anjou is pregnant. It’s a welcome addition to what remains of a vanishingly thin Plantagenet dynasty. 

Aside from Henry, this is the first royal birth in...

Don’t forget! Dan’s gifted you his favourite bonus episode from this season. To listen for free, simply search for the last episode before this one. 

England is descending into mob rule. Henry VI has presided over a catastrophic loss over almost all of the Plantagenet possessions in France, and many in the realm want a scapegoat. Assassinations of powerful officials including the Duke of Suffolk, William de La Pole ensue. And in the summer of 1450, the violence comes to a head. Rebels led by military captain Jack Cade storm London in an echo of the Peasa...

Hello! We’ve gifted one of Dan’s favourite bonus episodes from Season 9 just for you. To listen to all bonus episodes, ad-free, subscribe at patreon.com/thisishistory

Dan and Producer Al explore the likelihood of Margaret of Anjou, the English queen, having been a sleeper agent for the French. How involved was she in getting Henry VI to give up Maine? And what made Henry so useless? Did he have any redeeming features?

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Royal favourites, we want your voice notes in our new miniseries on historical failures. Look out for Producer Al’s callout post on patreon.com/thisishistory  

Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester — Henry V’s last surviving brother — is lost in delusion. He still believes England can somehow hold its possessions in France, even as its soldiers are exhausted, its treasury is drained, and its enemies grow stronger by the day. Across the Channel, King Charles VII of France hardly needs to fight; he simply needs to wait for England to collapse under the weight of its own war.

But...

Royal favourites, we want your voice notes in our new miniseries on historical failures. Look out for Producer Al’s callout post on patreon.com/thisishistory  

England’s grip on France is collapsing. After more than a century of brutal conflict, English forces across the Channel are exhausted, bankrupt, and beaten down.

In London, hopes rest on King Henry VI — now an adult and expected to rescue his father’s dying empire. But Henry is no warrior king, and the French are dismantling England’s hard‑won gains with shocking ease.

Then, a new force ente...

Owen Tudor is running out of time. With Queen Mother Catherine de Valois dead, their once‑secret marriage — and the Tudor bloodline it produced — is suddenly exposed. The English court is alarmed, the line of royal succession is in question, and powerful enemies are closing in.

But political panic is only the beginning. When Eleanor Cobham is accused of witchcraft and plotting against King Henry VI, England is convulsed by one of the most explosive scandals of the 15th century. Accusations of sorcery, prophecies of regicide, and ruthless factional battles collide at the heart of the medieval court...

The royal court isn’t exactly celebrating after the death of Joan of Arc. A dangerous liaison erupts between the widowed Queen of England, Catherine de Valois, and a Welsh suitor called Owen Tudor. 1430s England is not a safe place for the Welsh, let alone someone who risks muddying the royal lineage. It has become vanishingly thin after the death of King Henry V, and the crowning of nine-year-old King Henry VI as King of France hasn’t allayed the court’s fears about a fragile crown.

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