Book Reviews
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I’m afraid that to my mind Thomas Arundel was a very unpleasant creep. Given full rein, he’d have been England’s Torquemada! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom%C3%A1s_de_Torquemada) The fellow had no redeeming features that I could see. He was everything that was vile and obnoxious about the high-ranking Men of God of his time. More the Baby-eating Archbishop of Bath…
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I for one had never heard of Sir Marrok, one of King Arthur’s knights, who it seems was turned into a werewolf. This isn’t a new story, but is apparently traced back to a line in Malory: “….’sir Marrok the good knight that was betrayed with his wyff, for he made hym seven yere a…
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If you go to this link (https://tinyurl.com/4bv85ppr) you’ll find: “….If you like a good plot, a historical setting with plenty of twists and turns, betrayal, romance, and a surprise ending then Blood and White Roses is just the novel for you…..” So writes Natalie Key, Female First Book reviewer, about the new novel Blood and…
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Last month we published a post on the top fifty Ricardian fiction books and now we look at the top non- fiction ones. I wasn’t surprised at the top few of these. Number one was the classic biography of Richard the Third by Paul Murray Kendall. It flows like a novel and isn’t the usual…
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I received a link (https://tinyurl.com/3ske573a) to an article in The Spectator, concerning a review of Henry VII: Treason and Trust, by Sean Cunningham (Allen Lane, pp. 160, £15.99) Unfortunately I couldn’t read the review because I’d have to subscribe to The Spectator (although I could have one month free). Getting caught up in this one-month-free…
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Recently, it was revealed that twenty eminent Ricardians voted on their favourite fiction and non-fiction books. Here, we look at some of the fiction books and we’ll examine the non-fiction ones in a future post. As you might expect, the number one Ricardian fiction book was Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time, the book responsible…
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Perhaps you know that Friday 13th came to be considered unlucky because of the Knights Templar. The story goes: On the morning of Friday, October 13, 1307, King Philip IV. had many Templars arrested, including the order’s Grand Master, Jacques de Molay. In the days and weeks after that fateful Friday, more than 600 Templars…
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Well I’m not quite sure what to expect of this book, see https://tinyurl.com/5uajhun5. Yes, it focuses on the background rivalries that led to Bosworth, but is it fair to Richard III? As it’s written from the Welsh point of view, I have to hesitate. Even though Richard’s ancestry was more highborn Welsh than Henry Tudor,…
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The following contains my comments on this review (https://www.pressreader.com/uk/yorkshire-post-yp-magazine/20260124/282218017200594) of the book “The Eagle and the Hart” by Helen Castor. The reviewer (Greg Wright of YP Magazine) remarks that the “dazzling [book] has the pace of a thriller”. Well, it’s certain a work of fiction. Here is a small extract of the review, to set…
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Philippa Langley spoke at The Oldie Literary Lunch in London at the iconic Liberal Club in Whitehall on 15 July. There were three speakers on the day, all speaking after lunch, and they had ten minutes each. The other speakers with her were author and historian, Lucy Moore and author and TV presenter, David Hepworth.…
The New Murrey and Blue blog 