We're more used to hearing folk ballads sung with a finger in the ear these days, but there's a possibility that their origins were more akin to the demure, precisely enunciated delivery adopted by Lesley Garrett on this collection.

Behind the innuendo, Hampton Court Palace's new exhibition offers a fascinating insight into King Charles II's love of the female form, writes Adrian Hamilton

Latest play in series, written for Edinburgh, is tailored to win applause north of the border

Joely Richardson is a scion of England's grandest theatrical family, with a glittering career to match. But recent years have brought the deaths of the actress's sister, uncle and aunt. Arifa Akbar finds her in a pensive mood on the eve of her return to the London stage.

National Gallery, London

Unfairly maligned as one-dimensional by some, Saracens' South African-born No 12 may actually provide an answer to England's long-standing problem position

The historian Niall Ferguson once complained that schoolchildren are taught only about Henry VIII and the world wars. Yes, but let's face it, these are the blockbusters of British history.

Books Of The Year

The BBC is planning a television mini-series adaptation of Hilary Mantel's Booker-winning novel Wolf Hall.

"I will be a new Queen for a new England," cries Spooks star Miranda Raison as King Hal's spooky spouse Anne Boleyn, with her head tucked underneath her arm; you just wonder, on the evidence of this spirited and enchanting portrait, how great she might have been, outshining even her own daughter, Elizabeth I.

When The Hour begins tonight, armchair historians will be ready to pounce on the merest whiff of inaccuracy. Do period dramas have a duty to be entirely accurate? Or are we too hung up on total authenticity?

When I first began to read poetry seriously at school, "practical criticism" still held sway. This approach promoted the idea of an unmediated dialogue between the reader and the text – a sort of naked encounter session, free from the deceiving clothes of context. And it so happened that one of the poems stripped from its history that I enjoyed most delivered the electrifying delight of déshabillé. A masterpiece of petulant erotic longing (hence, perhaps, its allure for teenage readers), this lyric by Sir Thomas Wyatt begins "They flee from me that sometime did me seek". It goes on to recall a rejected lover's tryst with a fickle lady who "When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall/ And she caught me in her arms long and small/ Therewithal sweetly did me kiss,/ And softly said, 'Dear heart, how like you this?'"

One of history's most notorious families is returning to TV – this time with a class cast. Sarah Hughes has a preview

Royal romp is fresh and fast-moving