Book Reviews
-
“Elizabeth de Clare was born on this day, 16th September 1295, the granddaughter of King Edward I. The 11th Lady of Clare, she was the heiress to the lordships of Clare in England and Usk in Wales.” So starts this article about a very remarkable lady, also known as Elizabeth de Burgh, who took on…
-
I didn’t know how perilously close Shakespeare’s great work came to complete and utter obscurity, if not to say oblivion. But it seems that this year is the First Folio’s 400th anniversary. And if you read here 400 Years of the First Folio (shakespeare.org.uk) you’ll find the story of its miraculous survival….although I imagine the…
-
A BOOK ON PLANTAGENET QUEENS-BUT WHERE IS ANNE?
“Beauforts”, “Lambert Simnel”, “Tudor” rebellions, “Tudors”, Anne Neville, Anne of Bohemia, Bermondsey Abbey, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Eleanor of Castile, Eleanor of Provence, Elizabeth of York, Henry III, Henry VII, House of York, Joan of Kent, Joan of Navarre, John of Gaunt, Katherine de Roët, Lady Eleanor Talbot, Marguerite of France, Plantagenet Queens and Consorts, pre-contract, Richard II, Richard IIIA review of Plantagenet Queens and Consorts by Steven J. Corvi I am always partial to a good book on medieval English Queens. History being what it is, these women often get overlooked and sidelined unless they did something that was, usually, regarded as greedy, grasping or immoral. Therefore when I saw Steven J.…
-
Richard II was certainly the royal connoisseur of food. His famous book of recipes (well, he didn’t actually write it!) the Forme of Cury, is constantly resorted to as a record of just how well our 14th-century ancestors were provided for when they sat down to eat. How often are we told that they…
-
Reblogged fromA COLLECTION OF REVOLTING REMEDIES FROM THE MIDDLE AGES Revolting Remedies from the Middle Ages. Edited by Professor Daniel Wakelin. Published by the Bodleian Library Oxford. Under the Dreaming Spires of Oxford – well Oxford University to be precise – a group of students have compiled and transcribed this entertaining selection of remedies from…
-
Oh dear. There are times when Amazon recommends books to me that are actually anathema to a loyal Ricardian. This time it’s…I can hardly type it….that awful Terry Breverton book Henry VII: The Maligned King. Porkies from beginning to end. Well, if the Weasel has been maligned I’ll eat my Yorkist hat. Maligned suggests…
-
Using software that detects plagiarism in phrases etc, Dennis McCarthy has concluded that Shakespeare adapted earlier plays by “the scholar knight” Sir Thomas North. He sets his reasoning out in a new book entitled simply Thomas North, with the subtitle The Original Author of Shakespeare’s Plays. Is this true? Well, according to this review…
-
Well, my title is guesswork, of course, but surely Broom is a reference to Plantagenet (a name taken from planta genista, the Latin for the yellow broom flower). The story (the first in a series by author Andrew Beattie) is about the boys in the Tower, but is Jack Broom one of them? Or is…
-
Lawyer Bertram Fields, who practiced law under the shortened form of his name, Bert, recently passed away at the age of 93 from complications of a Covid-19 infection. Ricardians will remember him as the author of the excellent ROYAL BLOOD, in which, with a lawyer’s skill, he dissected much of the traditionalist viewpoints, even taking…
The New Murrey and Blue blog 