Ian Mortimer: Take almost any painting from Elizabethan England and what do you see? Royal courtiers dressed in silk and velvet magnificent jewels and ostentatious ruffs extravagant feasts and ...

Essential if you want to show you're on the up.' Bear in mind that Elizabethan England is, on average, two degrees colder than you're used to, with very cold snaps in the 1570s and the 1590s.