When the most powerful empire in Europe sends an Armada to invade your country, what do you do?

In this episode of our trilogy on Elizabeth I, we reach the moment everyone associates with England’s most famous queen: the looming threat of the Spanish Armada. But the great showdown of 1588 did not arrive out of nowhere. It was the result of years of political intrigue, espionage, religious tension — and a dangerous rivalry with Philip II of Spain.

Along the way we meet the other woman whose shadow hung over Elizabeth’s reign: Mary, Queen of Scots. Was she a genuine threat to the English throne, or a prisoner whose existence fuelled a web of plots and paranoia? From the murky world of spies and codebreakers to the dramatic fallout of the Babington Plot, Elizabeth’s government was constantly balancing mercy, survival and ruthless political calculation.

Then comes the crisis that would define the age. As Spain’s vast armada sails towards England, Elizabeth faces the greatest challenge of her reign — and delivers the famous rallying cry at Tilbury, declaring that though she has the body of a “weak and feeble woman”, she has the heart and stomach of a king.

The defeat of the Armada would become one of the most powerful myths in English history. Yet as we discover, the reality was far messier — with further armadas, failed invasions, and an emerging English maritime power that would shape the world in ways both triumphant and troubling.

Next time: the Virgin Queen’s most personal battlefield — her love life, her suitors, and the political game of marriage that defined the rest of her reign.

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Content Editor: Joseph Palmer

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.

Sign up to Palace Confidential, the FREE royals newsletter from the Mail's top experts. Delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday, it's the smartest way to stay in the royal inner circle. Just head to dailymail.co.uk/palaceconfidential to sign up today.

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She was born a princess and declared a bastard before she could walk.

In this episode, we go back to the beginning of Elizabeth I: a child of extraordinary promise, born into splendour, then cast into uncertainty by the fall of her mother, Anne Boleyn. Courtly favour turned to suspicion. Affection turned to danger. And survival became a skill learned early.

From the shadow of Henry VIII’s volatile court to the careful education that shaped her formidable intellect, this is the story of a girl navigating power long before she wore a crown. Stepmothers rose and fell. Brothers and sisters shifted in rank and religion. Every alliance mattered. Every silence mattered more.

This is the first of three deep dives into the Virgin Queen, beginning with the precarious childhood that forged one of history’s most enduring rulers.

Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams explore the instability, calculation, and emotional discipline that defined Elizabeth’s early years and ask how a child declared illegitimate grew into a monarch who would outlast them all.

Was her resilience instinct? Training? Or the necessary armour of a Tudor princess who learned, very young, that survival was everything?

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Content Editor: Joseph Palmer

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.

Sign up to Palace Confidential, the FREE royals newsletter from the Mail's top experts. Delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday, it's the smartest way to stay in the royal inner circle. Just head to dailymail.co.uk/palaceconfidential to sign up today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Shakespeare, Hollywood, the Oscars, the plague, and a little boy called Hamnet.

In this episode of Queens, Kings and Dastardly Things, Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams are joined by historian Alice Loxton to explore the extraordinary new film Hamnet — the Oscar-tipped adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s bestselling novel.

Set in late 16th-century Stratford-upon-Avon and plague-stricken London, the film imagines the private world of William Shakespeare, his wife Anne Hathaway — here called Agnes — and their three children. When their son Hamnet dies in 1596, the story asks a haunting question: did that loss shape the creation of the play Hamlet?

We explore Tudor childbirth, superstition and healing, the realities of plague in Elizabethan England, and the fragile line between history and imagination. Who was Anne Hathaway really? A healer? A neglected wife? A woman left to manage home and grief while her husband built a theatrical empire?

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Content Editor: Joseph Palmer

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.

Sign up to Palace Confidential, the FREE royals newsletter from the Mail's top experts. Delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday, it's the smartest way to stay in the royal inner circle. Just head to dailymail.co.uk/palaceconfidential to sign up today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.