We’re going to party like it’s 1629… the masques, the music and the mayhem of Banqueting House

What music soundtracked 17th-century England? Ahead of a DJ set in Banqueting House, Georgia Mann looks at the wild, the experimental, the melancholic – and why a theorbo caused a security alert

King Charles is on the throne, there’s anxiety around the power-brokers of Whitehall, and an age of deep political division and conspiracy obsession is under way.

That’s right, I’m referring to the middle years of the 17th century, a period I’m immersed in as I’m putting together a Jacobean-Carolean Classical DJ set, where the beats are to be dropped beneath one of the UK’s most awesome works of art: the Rubens painted ceiling at the Banqueting House in Whitehall.