television reviews
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The Great British Dig – History in Your Garden (2)
Agricola, Antonine Wall, Antoninus Pius, Beningborough, bowls clubs, castles, Channel Four, Chloe Duckworth, Devizes, Elizabethan buildings, Falkirk, Hadrian’s Wall, housing estates, Hugh Dennis, Iron Age, John Bourchier, Liverpool, mill streams, Natasha Billson, North Yorkshire, power, prisons, Richard Taylor, Roman Empire, roundabouts, royal hunting estates, schools, St. Edward the Confessor, sunken gardens, The Great British Dig, West Derby, WiltshireHugh Dennis and his small team of archaeologists are back on Channel Four and this time they have gone back a full two thousand years and beyond. The series starts in Falkirk with a fort and a piece of the Antonine Wall, apparently buried under several gardens and a bowls club. After some digging, the…
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Lucy Worsley “proves” Richard III murdered his nephews….!
battles, buildings, genealogy, law, religion, Science, sources, television reviews, The play’s the thing“Princes”, ambush, Battle of Bosworth, BBC2, bias, bigamy, bones, British Museum, Charles II, coins, Coronation, Dighton, Domenico Mancini, dressing-up box, Edward IV’s will, Elizabeth Wydeville, executions, Forrest, Henry VII, Hicks, illegitimacy, James Butler, JCB, Lord Protector of the Realm, Lucy Worsley, Ludlow Castle, Matt Lewis, More, Old St. Paul’s, pre-contract, Ralph Shaa, Richard III, Richard of Shrewsbury, scoliosis, Sir Anthony Wydeville, Stony Stratford, Tanner and Wright, Tim Thornton, Tower of London, Turi King, Tyrrell “confession”Episode 3 of Lucy Worsley‘s latest TV series is about The Princes in the Tower, and from the outset it’s clear that Lucy is Lady Dracula, because she goes for Richard III’s jugular at every opportunity. The thought that he might be innocent doesn’t seem to occur to her because she’s utterly convinced of…
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Richard III’s predecessor, Richard II, shares with him the injustice of being maligned through history. In Richard II’s case all we hear that he was a hysterical madman who was rightly removed from his throne (and this world) by his cousin Henry, Duke of Lancaster, who became Henry IV. All sorts of scenarios are…
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This fascinating Channel Four documentary, featuring Earl Spencer at his family seat since 1508, included a team of archaelogists led by Gone Mediaeval‘s Cat Jarman. They set out to rediscover a lost mediaeval village that was mentioned in the Domesday Book, for which there was some evidence in the cellars of Althorp House. Investigations in…
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Many of you will have watched the 2014-16 BBC production of The Musketeers, the first series of which starred Peter Capaldi as Cardinal Richelieu. The third series was based on Dumas’ lesser-known sequels, in which Henrietta Maria, separated from her husband Charles I for her own safety and by mutual consent, is permanently residing with…
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Oh, good grief…. This article proves what a dire black mark must be given to the teaching (or lack of it) in our schools! What are we to do when even the teachers don’t know what they’re teaching about? Nor does the writer of the article know anything, mentioning the battles of Bosworth Hill and…
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This two part series was originally shown on 5Select during December 2021, presented by Tracy Borman from the Tower of London. It went beyond the cliched story of: the brewery in Putney, service to Wolsey, surviving him, the Dissolution, outmanoeuvring Anne Boleyn, setting up the Cleves “marriage” and being sent to the block to encounter…
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On the BBC news channel recently there was an item about Pete Waterman (of Stock Aitkin and Waterman fame) and his beloved model railway, which is spectacular and will feature in an upcoming showing of Timeshift on BBC 4. The episode in question is in Series 12, episode 7 of 10, entitled “The…
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