One of the exciting things about teaching history is watching the penny drop with pupils who discover that history is created and is not a single uncontested story. To get pupils to that point takes skill and patience as pupils often prefer ‘the right answer’ rather than the messiness that comes with uncertainty. And history is full of uncertainty.
To help pupils get over their dislike of the provisional and the unsure, it is often helpful to engage them in a mystery, one to which no-one knows for sure what the true meaning is behind a source. Enter paintings.
As these never come with a label explaining what they are and certainly never what they mean, they provide a genuine context for pupils to make their own meaning and then modify it in the light of expert help.
When teaching the Tudors using portraits you are never far away from
