The Wars of the Roses concluded, Britain could finally afford to reap some of the rewards of civilization. In this programme we see the vast opulence of the most richest woman in Britian, Bess of Hardwicke, as well as the invention of tennis (originally played with kitchen sieves), horceracing, the theatre, and knitting. And of course what programme would be complete without an investigation of that perennial Hart-Davis obsession, the Water Closet.
Adam looks at the development of Tudor weapons of war, taking in unpleasant implements of torture, cryptography, and casts his own cannon out of pure iron and test fires it!
Among many enduring Tudor inventions were the pencil, enabled by the discovery in Wales of what for the long time would be the only graphite pit in Britain, the telescope, perspective and oil paints, applied to create pictures of unprecedented realism using the camera obscura.
During this era there were the most striking transformations of our understanding of our place in the Universe. Adam explains how Tudor ides of astronomy were revolutionsed by the discovery of a "new star" or "nova" in 1572, and how the dubious practice of alchemy gradually gave place to chemistry, alongside the discovery of many new substances.