Suzannah Lipscomb

Writing

Suzannah has written for most of the UK papers and many magazines including The Times, Sunday Times, Guardian, Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph, Financial Times, Daily Mail, Radio Times, TLS, BBC History magazine, History Today, BBC Countryfile magazine, the Spectator, and Unherd.com.

For Suzannah’s books, see here

Making History

From 2014 to 2023, Suzannah wrote a bimonthly column called ‘Making History’ for History Today.  She wrote some 50-odd columns on how we should do history, the value of history in the public sphere, and the importance of historians.

Some of her most popular columns were:

Rude words are a constant, but their ability to cause offence is in flux. Historians should know their flim–flam from their fiddle–faddle.

History books by men are bought in far greater quantities than those by women. Why?

History neglected is as troubling as history erased. We need to rethink the discipline.

The propagation of humanity has been a bloody struggle for women.

Historians should adhere to a rigorous code of professional practice if they are to avoid the kinds of careless mistakes that bring their professional integrity into question, says Suzannah Lipscomb.

Her valedictory column, Reflecting on the Past, gathers up many of the themes she considered over the years.

Articles

Here is a selection of Suzannah’s articles:

‘What will the next plague bring?’, Unherd

‘How to survive a Little Ice Age’, Unherd

‘Why are women becoming witches?’  Unherd

‘The glorious reign of King Henry IX’, Unherd

‘The women who would not be silenced’, BBC History Magazine

‘Henry VIII’s last days: Who hijacked Henry’s will? BBC History Magazine

‘Why did Anne Boleyn have to die?’ BBC History Magazine

 ‘Silenced voices’ , Times Literary Supplement

‘Game of Thrones has hacked our history’, The Guardian

 ‘Carving Merlin into the cliffs was an act of vandalism’ , The Daily Telegraph

‘Who was Henry VIII?’ History Today

Review Articles

Here is a selection of articles in which Suzannah reviewed the work of others:

On Savage Shores – overturning Columbus’s ‘discovery’ narrative, reviewing On Savage Shores by Caroline Dodds Pennock, Financial Times

Are feminist historians rewriting the past? reviewing Femina by Janina Ramirez on Unherd.com

What turns women into witches? reviewing The Ruin of All Witches by Malcolm Gaskill and The Last Witches in England by John Callow, Unherd.com

Living I Was Your Plague: Luther’s Legacy by Lyndal Roper, Financial Times

Emperor: A New Life of Charles V by Geoffrey Parker, Financial Times

‘Tudor England’s other Bess’, Devices and Desires: Bess of Hardwick by Kate Hubbard, The Spectator

‘Playing with fire: Elizabethan espionage by candelight’, review of The Secret Theatre, directed by Anders Lustgarten, TLS

‘Clime, complexion and degree: Black Africans in Britain in the early modern period’, review of Black Tudors by Miranda Kaufmann, TLS

‘Mantel’s tale drips with the putrid scents of the Tudor age’, The Daily Telegraph