Talking Tudors

Host Natalie Grueninger interviews historian Ebrahim Joseph about the surprising influence of ancient Persia, especially Cyrus the Great, on Elizabethan England. They explore classical and biblical sources, princely education, political advice, court drama (including The Wars of Cyrus), the Mary, Queen of Scots debate, and early contacts with Safavid Persia, showing how Persian models of charismatic and ruthless kingship shaped Tudor political culture.

LEARN MORE ABOUT EBRAHIM JOSEPH https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/people/ebrahim-hanifehpour-0

Read ‘Honour and Deceit in The Warres of Cyrus, Classical Persia, and Elizabethan Politics’ by Ebrahim Joseph

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X26101745

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Host Natalie Grueninger speaks with Dr Lauren Working about her book 'A Golden World' and how voyages to the Americas reshaped 16th‑century England. The episode traces Atlantic influences on London life, art, fashion and trade through objects and people brought back from the New World.

Examples include the flood of pearls and emeralds, the rise of tobacco and new fashions, live exotic animals and the crucial Indigenous knowledge behind many colonial practices. The conversation emphasises that Tudor England, even without a formal empire, was transformed by ongoing Atlantic encounters.

Learn more about Dr Working

https://www.york.ac.uk/english/people/laurenworking/

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Host Natalie Grueninger speaks with Dr David Grummitt about the December 1460 events commonly called the Battle of Wakefield. Dr Grummitt argues the episode was a small ambush and murder of Richard, Duke of York and his son rather than a large pitched battle, and explains the primary evidence behind this interpretation.

The episode also covers the immediate Lancastrian response, the march to the Palm Sunday battles of 1461, and how later Tudor chroniclers and historians transformed these events into a more dramatic mythology.

READ DR GRUMMITT & PAUL DAWSON'S ARTICLE

https://oro.open.ac.uk/105170/

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Host Natalie Grueninger welcomes Catherine Williams to the podcast to discuss Tudor poetry.

Follow Catherine Williams on Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/catherinevwill/

 

TAKEAWAY

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/

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Host Natalie Grueninger welcomes Dr Ashley Douglas to discuss her new book, 'With My Own Hand: The Secret Life of Marie Maitland, Scotland's Sixteenth-Century Sappho'. They discuss the life and poems of Marie Maitland, a 16th-century Scottish scribe whose Maitland Quarto contains early sapphic verse.

The episode explores Marie's family and court connections, her role as her blind father's secretary, the manuscript's anonymous female poems, and the wider significance for women's and LGBT+ history in Reformation Scotland.

VISIT DR DOUGLAS' OFFICIAL WEBSITE

https://ashleydouglas.scot/

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