Book Reviews
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There are few more fertile sources for intricate information about the medieval past (and other areas too, of course) than theses that have been published online. A prime website for these is White Rose eTheses on line, of which I have written before. I am mentioning the site again now because of finding a particularly absorbing 2016 thesis by Anna Maria…
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Given her huge notoriety at the time, it’s odd that Edward III’s mistress, Alice Perrers, has (as far as I can ascertain) only garnered one biography. This is Lady of the Sun by F George Kay, 1966 (and seemingly never reprinted). There are no surviving contemporary likenesses of Alice, nor even a description of her.…
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Having just acquired Nigel Saul’s For Honour and Fame, about chivalry in England from 1066 to 1500, one of my first actions was (as always!) to go to the pages that refer to Richard III. Well, it’s second nature to any Ricardian, I think. So, on page 279, I read: “. . .A generation later…
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Here is the front cover of the next book, about Edward IV’s chief mistress, from Britain’s busiest historian , to be published by Pen and Sword on 31 July. I wonder which surprises he will have for us this time?
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The Tudors were past masters with propaganda, and there just wasn’t much of it being used against them. So how about we expunge them from history? How about we produce proof that Richard III was the victor at Bosworth….? Good idea, I think! You saw it here first, folks – and just to make sure…
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Peter Corris, “the godfather of Australian crime”, has died at the age of 76. His name may not be all that well known to us (well, to me, I confess) but he was clearly a towering force in the literature of his home country. When I received notice of this obituary, it was stated that he…
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On the book front, I am rather excited about GRANT ME THE CARVING OF MY NAME, an upcoming anthology of fiction about Richard III , which should be out right in time to make a fabulous Christmas present. Release date is scheduled for December 2 and all proceeds from sales will go to the Scoliosis…
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The Mythology of the “Princes in the Tower”
“Tudor” propaganda, Bethnal Green, books, Charles II, dental evidence, Edward V, Elizabeth Roberts, Garden Tower, Glenn Moran, Henry Pole the Younger, identification, illegitimacy, John Ashdown-Hill, Joy Ibsen, Leicester dig, mtDNA evidence, pre-contract, Richard III, Richard of Shrewsbury, The Mythology of the “Princes in the Tower”, The Private Life of Edward IV, Three Estates, Westminster AbbeyThis is less a book and more of an outdoor swimming pool, becoming deeper as the chapters progress. In the shallow end, the subjects go from the definition of a “prince” and the circumstances under which Edward IV’s elder sons came to live there, centuries before Buckingham Palace was built to the origin of the…