The eighth Canterbury history weekend returns to the Tudor and Stuart period. The weekend event running from Friday 28 to Sunday 30 April 2023, showcases recent research on the period of the Tudors and Stuarts, making it readily accessible to a wide audience.

Among the internationally renowned scholars are Alec Ryrie, Vanessa Harding, Richard Hoyle and Elaine Hobby, covering topics from Henry VIII’s marriages and succession, to Aphra Behn, the first professional woman writer in English.

Some highlights include:

• Experiencing Life in the Early Modern House – Professor Catherine Richardson

How do we know what it felt like to live in an early modern house – the sights, sounds and smells, the levels of light, warmth and comfort? How do we know what objects it was filled with and what they meant to the inhabitants, and what those men, women and children got up to inside?

• El Greco – Imogen Corrigan

Domenikos Theotokopoulos, known as The Greek, became one of Spain’s most successful Mannerist painters. Although he trained with and was influenced by Renaissance greats like Titian and Tintoretto, he developed his own distinctive style that makes his work instantly recognisable, although many are surprised to learn that he lived in the sixteenth/seventeenth centuries and not modern times.

• Professor Steven Gunn: Everyday life and accidental death in sixteenth-century Kent

This talk will use evidence from coroners’ inquests to ask what people did all day in Tudor Kent. Some hazards were common wherever in England people lived: fetching water, driving carts, playing football, ringing church bells. Others reflected Kent’s landscape and economy.

Tickets: £10/person per event. Discount: for those buying 10 or more tickets in one transaction, then each ticket is £8/person per event.

Full listings and booking information can be found here.

Canterbury History Weekends are organised by the CCCU Centre for Kent History and Heritage in conjunction with Canterbury Cathedral Archives & Library, and raise money for the Ian Coulson Memorial Postgraduate Award fund, which aids CCCU postgraduates who are studying Kent history topics.