NEW ONLINE COURSE: The Tudors - The Creation of a Dynasty

Limited tickets available now!

You asked for more online content, so here we go! Myself and the brilliant

Nicola Tallis

have teamed up to bring you an EXCLUSIVE online history course this August. Here are the details:

The Tudors are England’s most celebrated dynasty, but their fascinating origins offer as much drama as anything that followed once they became royal. In this exclusive, brand-new course, we will delve deep into the family archives to reveal who the Tudors were, how they came to be a force during the Wars of the Roses, and ultimately accomplished the unthinkable, and wrested the English crown away from the mighty Plantagenets.

Come and join us for the enthralling, action-packed story of the Tudors - but not as you know it!

WHEN?

The course will take place from 25th-31st August (though if you can’t attend then, it’ll be available to watch for a month)

WHAT?

• Six pre-recorded, 45-minute lectures.

• Access to all lectures for a month from the upload date.

• A live Q&A via Zoom with Nathen and Nicola, who will answer all your burning questions and explore the story of the rise of the Tudors with you.

PRICE

£35.00 per person, plus booking fee.

LECTURE DETAILS

Lecture One: ‘Studying the Sources: How we know what we know’

Join Nathen and Nicola as they begin the course with a deep dive into the sources available to piece together the origins of English history’s most fascinating dynasty. We’ll be talking about manuscripts, chronicles, contemporary letters and accounts, and will touch on portraits, places and material culture too. We’ll be considering how to ascertain the usefulness and reliability of these sources, before ultimately thinking about what they tell us about this extraordinary family.

Lecture Two: ‘Beginnings: Katherine and Owen – a queen and her squire’

The relationship between Katherine of Valois and Owen Tudor was remarkable, and without rival in medieval England. In this enthralling and gripping talk, Nathen Amin will attempt to unravel just how a widowed queen of England, mother to the boy king Henry VI and a daughter and sister of kings of France no less, found comfort in the arms of a Welsh rebel. Though nobody would realise at the time, this secret union between a Frenchwoman and a Welshman marked the beginning of the Tudors, perhaps England’s greatest dynasty.

Lecture Three: ‘The Road to War: York, Lancaster and Tudor’

To understand how the Tudors would be given an opportunity to stake a claim to the throne, we begin by exploring the role they played in the conflict that became known as the Wars of the Roses. When tensions in England erupted into violence in 1455 and the house of Lancaster faced opposition from Richard, Duke of York, nobody could – or would – have anticipated that the eventual outcome of the wars would result in the birth of a new dynasty. We will explore the ways in which the sons of Katherine of Valois and Owen Tudor, Edmund and, more significantly, Jasper, supported their half-brother Henry VI and remained loyal even in the face of adversity. The outcome of the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471 changed everything though – and most especially for the Tudors.

Lecture Four: ‘Exile: The Tudors Abroad’

Henry Tudor was born at an unfortunate moment – as a toddler, war raged all around him as the houses of York and Lancaster fought for the English throne. Related on both sides of his family tree, to avoid certain death at the hands of his enemies, at just fourteen years old, he was forced to flee everything he knew to escape abroad.

The fourteen years Henry spent in exile are a fascinating period that helped shape the man and king he was to become. Throughout that period, he was a prisoner of others, a diplomatic pawn looking over his shoulder for plots to kill him. Just how did this little-known and forgotten Welsh earl, languishing in Brittany, become transformed as a king-in-waiting?

Lecture Five: ‘Uncrowned Queen: Margaret Beaufort’

‘Henry VII’s devout and rather awesome mother’, was the description of Margaret Beaufort offered by a 1970s biographer of the first Tudor king, but there’s far more to Margaret than that. Having given birth to Henry – her only child – at the painfully young age of thirteen in 1457, Margaret’s life gained new meaning. Determined to protect her son from the turbulence of the Wars of the Roses, Margaret even attempted to reconcile with Edward IV and the house of York in order to achieve this. But, when Edward died and Richard III eventually became king, Margaret’s ambitions – and those of her son – began to change. Margaret quickly became involved in a plot to depose Richard, and it would be she who worked hard to engineer his downfall in order to secure a glorious future for her son. When Henry Tudor won the Battle of Bosworth – against all odds – in 1485, his mother would become a queen in all but name.

Lecture Six: ‘The Princes in the Tower and the Rise of Henry Tudor’

The fate of the Princes in the Tower is one of British history’s most enduring mysteries – just what happened to the sons of Edward IV, and did their uncle Richard III murder them? In this overview, Nathen Amin doesn’t claim to be able to solve the unsolvable, but will explore just how Henry Tudor was able to exploit the uncertainty to launch the most daring gambit of the medieval period – to invade England and seize the English throne.

COURSE LEADERS

Nathen Amin is an author from Carmarthenshire, West Wales, who focuses on the 15th Century and the reign of Henry VII. He has written five books, including ‘The House of Beaufort' (2017), ‘Henry VII and the Tudor Pretenders; Simnel, Warbeck and Warwick' (2021), and ‘The Son of Prophecy: The Rise of Henry Tudor’ (2024), a BBC History Book of the Year. An experienced public speaker, Nathen has spoken at some of the largest history and literary festivals in the UK and France, and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Dr Nicola Tallis is a historian and author who has written extensively on the Tudor period. She received her PhD at the University of Winchester, where her thesis examined the jewellery collections of the queens of England between 1445 and 1548, and has worked as a curator, lecturer, and historical researcher. Nicola has written five books, including ‘Crown of Blood: The Deadly Inheritance of Lady Jane Grey’, ‘Elizabeth’s Rival: The Tumultuous Tale of Lettice Knollys, Countess of Leicester’, ‘Uncrowned Queen: The Tumultuous Life of Margaret Beaufort, Tudor Matriarch’, ‘All The Queen’s Jewels 1445-1548: Power, Majesty, and Display’, and most recently ‘Young Elizabeth: Princess. Prisoner. Queen’. She is a regular contributor to both radio and television, and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

BOOK YOUR TICKETS

To reserve your place (they are limited), use THIS LINK! We hope to see you there.