Last one of 2014!

* Me, me, me … the Elizabethan earl who kept portrait painters busy for 30 years – If you can tell a person by their collection of paintings, what are we to make of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who commissioned more portraits of himself than any other courtier in Elizabethan England?

* 7 things you (probably) didn’t know about Henry VIII’s flagship the Mary Rose

* National archives podcast with writer of the month: Tracy Borman on Thomas Cromwell – Dr Tracy Borman, author, historian and broadcaster, discusses her biography of Thomas Cromwell.

* Hampton Court Palace recreates Edward VI christening for 500th anniversary celebrations – The recreation can be seen in an upcoming BBC documentary hosted by David Starkey January 10 on the BBC.

* Portraits of Power – Thomas Penn and his colleagues have embarked on a project to publish a series of short biographies of England’s and, subsequently, Britain’s monarchs.