Taster Bundle

Following an intensive programme of research and refurbishment at Hever Castle in Kent, the only surviving suite of rooms that the Boleyn family once occupied is now re-presented in a style and decoration that would be familiar to them. Kate McCaffrey explains the process of refurbishing and reinterpreting rooms where historical evidence underpinned every design decision.

Carlisle Castle, a medieval fortress located in Cumbria on the Anglo-Scottish border, was frequently under attack in an area where invasion, ambushes, raids and looting were commonplace for centuries. Julian Humphrys explores the Tudor history of the castle and its two most famous prisoners, Mary, Queen of Scots and Kinmont Willie Armstrong.

Knole is one of England's great houses. owned by the National Trust and still lived in by the descendants of Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset, it is possible at Knole to follow in the footsteps of the kings, queens, archbishops and nobility who have been there before us. Dr Elizabeth Norton delves into the medieval and Tudor history of this wonderful treasure house.

Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, was once one of the most powerful and wealthy women in England, with extensive landholdings in the southeast of England and across the channel in Calais. Dr Rachel Delman looks at Margaret's principal residence of Warblington Castle. A section of the gatehouse remains as a tantalising glimpse of this once splendid Tudor property.

While the religious changes that buffeted the country during the reigns of Henry VIII and his children had a profound impact upon the fixtures and fittings of the parish church, those changes were not experienced uniformly or universally. Dr Emma J Wells explores how the colourful later medieval church interiors changed and evolved over the course of the sixteenth century and what can still be seen of them in the parish church today.

After Mary, Queen of Scots' brutal end in a remote area of the Midlands, she was buried in Peterborough Cathedral. this, however, was not to be her final resting place. Dr Emma J Wells follows Mary's story from death to reburial, looking at her extraordinary tomb in Westminster Abbey.