Book Reviews
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The Travels of Leo of Rozmital in the 15th century are fascinating, and if you register (free) for a virtual library card here you can read about them for 14 days. You can access up to five books all told. Between 1465 and 1467 Leo (a Bohemian nobleman and celebrated jouster who died this day in…
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The above illustrations show two royal widows. On the left Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, mother of both Edward IV and Richard III. On the right an imagined meeting between Edward IV and the widow he was to marry, Elizabeth Woodville. In this modern age, when we are striving to live longer and longer, it’s…
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I have just seen a review of Chris Skidmore’s biography of Richard III which has got me rather incensed. Now, I have to admit first of all that I haven’t read the book in question, because I have heard from several reliable sources that it is biased against Richard, despite claiming to be neutral, so…
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This song was written in conjunction with the Mortimer History Society for Philip Hume’s book about the noble family.
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In this article, about revising the reputation of Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince, I wrote of the 2017 biography of the prince by Michael Jones, in which an undoubted stain on the prince’s memory was reconsidered. The prince apparently ordered the sack the city of Limoges, and slaughter of at least 3,000 inhabitants. This number, and…
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As we mentioned here, Ashdown-Hill’s biography of Richard’s mother was published in April. Whilst his latest, to which we shall return later, was released today, we shall concentrate on Cecily here. This is the book that summarises Cecily’s life by delineating her full and half-siblings, demonstrating that portraits (right) previously assumed to be of her and…
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There are times when researching the past is, for a woman of today, a very insulting experience. This morning at the hairdresser I dipped into a book called Medieval Maidens: Young Women and Gender in England, 1270-1540. (No Hello, Heat or OK for me!) Yes, I knew before I started that I wouldn’t like…
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The fifth book in Toni Mount’s Foxley series about medieval murders. “She told us: ‘It is called The Colour of Murder and deals with even more medieval murders, including the mysterious death of The Duke of Clarence, one of the future Richard III’s brothers, who, tradition tells us was drowned in a wine barrel.’” Can only…
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These are taken from Pierce’s biography of his paternal grandmother Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, we have some sinister clues to his fate. Our witness is Charles de Marillac, French ambassador from 1538-43, whose correspondence with Francois I is copiously quoted in the Letters and Papers of Henry VIII. de Marillac wrote on 1 July 1540…
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After eleven revelatory history books in a decade, and two more forthcoming, this is very different. I wonder whether any of the subject matter is relevant to his research? There is only one way to find out.
The New Murrey and Blue blog 