SHE-WOLVES: ENGLAND'S EARLY QUEENS In the Medieval and Tudor world there was no question in peoples’ minds about the order of God’s creation – men ruled and women didn’t. A King was a warrior who literally fought to win power then battled to keep it.

Yet despite everything that stood in their way, a handful of extraordinary women did attempt to rule medieval and Tudor England. In this series historian Helen Castor explores seven queens who challenged male power, the fierce reactions they provoked, and whether the term ‘She Wolves’ was deserved.

From Matilda, the first woman who came within a hairs breadth of being crowned Queen of England in her own right, to the glorious reign of Elizabeth I, Helen looks at the dramatic, often violent, lives of the women who pursued power between them. These are the stories of Matilda, Eleanor, Isabella, Margaret and the Tudor queens - Jane, Mary and Elizabeth. They are tales of dynastic strife, marriage, motherhood divorce and betrayal but also of courage and struggling to operate in world of double standards. And to explore these extraordinary women’s stories is to see not just how far we’ve come but how little has changed.

MEDIEVAL LIVES: BIRTH, MARRIAGE AND DEATH Historian and author Helen Castor, presenter of the popular series She-Wolves, explores how the people of the Middle Ages handled the most fundamental moments of transition in life: birth, marriage and death. In doing so she reveals how people in the medieval world thought and what they believed in. For the people of the Middle Ages the teachings of the Catholic Church shaped thoughts and beliefs across the whole of Western Europe. But by the end of the Middle Ages the Church would find itself in the grip of momentous change and the way of medieval birth, marriage and death would never be quite the same again.

THE DARK AGES: AN AGE OF LIGHT The early Middle Ages have been dismissed as a step backwards for civilization—a barbaric time in which warfare and conquest eclipsed learning and progress. But were the “Dark Ages” really so bleak? Art historian Waldemar Januszczak says no, then takes us on an artistic journey back to this much-maligned epoch to reveal the evidence. He travels from Britain to North Africa and from Byzantium to Spain, finding beauty and refinement where one might have expected only brutality and destruction.

With Januszczak as a gregarious guide, witness the mysteries of early Christian art, Islam’s masterly mosques, intricate Anglo-Saxon metalwork, and the painstakingly illuminated Lindisfarne Gospels. Along the way, discover that the people who rose from the ashes of the Roman Empire did not lack for wisdom or beauty—they created their own age of light.