Book Reviews
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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…
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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.…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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The Despensers: The Rise and fall of a mediaeval family
Anne Neville, Battle of Evesham, Boroughbridge, Contrarians, Despensers, Edward II, Edward IV, Eleanor de Clare, Elizabeth Despenser, Epiphany Rising, executions, George Duke of Clarence, Henry III, Henry IV, Huchon Despenser, Hugh Despencer, Hugh Despencer the Younger, Hugh Earl of Winchester, Isabel Neville, Isabella de Valois, Isabelle Despencer, John Ashdown-Hill, Justiciar, Kathryn Warner, Lady Eleanor Talbot, Margaret Beauchamp, Margery Wentworth, Philip Despenser, plague, Richard II, Richard III, Thomas Earl of Gloucester, Thomas of LancasterHere is another of Kathryn Warner‘s volumes in which the genealogy is central but there is plenty of history about the principal individuals that comprise the structure of the book. These range from Hugh Despenser the Justiciar, who fell at Evesham in 1265 opposing Henry III, to his son and grandson (the latter married to…
The New Murrey and Blue blog 