Barry Shannon

Since his death in the year 1547, King Henry VIII has been celebrated as a chivalrous pioneer and reviled as a brutal tyrant, but he has never been ignored. Henry was responsible for the separation of the Church of England from the Roman Catholic...

In Britain the phrase ‘an heir and a spare’ refers to the imperative for members of the royal family to provide both an heir to take on their title and a spare. In this equation King George VI was ‘the spare’, the second son of King George V and Mary,...

Who will become a mummy…It’s 1324 BC in Egypt – the time of King Tut. The high priest Nebamun and his brother Iramen, the embalmer, are standing ready at the embalming slab.Nebamun feels trapped and surrounded by death. Will he ever be able to escape...

Mary Stuart was born into a powerful royal dynasty that was at war with the rest of Europe and with itself. Mary’s ascent to the throne was disarmingly easy and she reached adulthood completely unprepared for the plots and betrayals she would be...