Penguin monarchs. The House of Tudor

Edward VI, the only son of Henry VIII, became king at the age of 9 and died wholly unexpectedly at the age of 15. All around him loomed powerful men who hoped to use the child to further their own ends, but who were also playing a long game - assuming that Edward would outlive them and become as ...

Henry VIII's reign transformed the physical and spiritual landscape of England. Magnificent, tyrannical, a strong ruler, a 'pillager of the commonwealth', this most notorious of kings remains a figure of extreme contradictions: a devout traditionalist who oversaw a cataclysmic rupture with the ch...

The elder daughter of Henry VIII, Mary I (1553-58) became England's ruler on the unexpected death of her brother Edward VI. Her short reign is one of the great potential turning points in the country's history. As a convinced Catholic and the wife of Philip II, King of Spain and the most powerful...