Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England

Although most people have images of courtiers in fine clothes and lavish palaces, the reality is that most Elizabethans are poor. What is it like to live in a dank, smoke-filled hovel in the countryside? How will you cope in a world of darkness? What will you eat, how will you travel, what work will you get? How can you survive on as little as fourpence a day?

Money alone is not enough to allow you to blend in with the royal court. There is much to learn about how the wealthy dress, greet and behave. The high classes operate with their own secret codes of manners, dress, hygiene and dancing. Even something as simple as the size of your ruff may be enough to betray an out-of-date outfit and have you excluded from the upper levels of society. This is quite literally a cut-throat world; spies circle the great and good and one false word from you or your servants could cost you everything. Then there is the Queen herself, including the horrifying cost of hosting a royal progress.

In the final episode of the series, Dr Ian Mortimer travels through the world of a new and upwardly mobile section of Elizabethan society - the middle class. In a groundbreaking new way of exploring history, Ian takes viewers on a present-tense journey through this golden age of English history.