Dan Jones
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Well, I think Dan Jones has now lost all credibility as a serious historian. Why? Because of the new “comedy” series Sex: A Bonkers History in which he stars with Amanda Holden. The trailer, which might as well be for a Carry On film, is forever popping up on my TV screen, and he is…
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Well, it seems that Gloucester is now the centre of the world. In a manner of speaking, of course, because the “Gloucester History Festival goes from the mythical Middle Ages to the modern Middle East”—see here. The 3-day festival , which ended on 14 April 2024, was a huge success and according to organisers it…
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Today is 13 March 2024, but thankfully it’s a Wednesday, not a Friday. Why thankfully? Well, we all know the old belief that Fridays which fall on the thirteenth day of a month are considered to be very unlucky. It occurred in October 2023, and will happen again in September and December this year, then…
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My introduction to the Battle of Shrewsbury was at school, when Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part I had to be studied for ‘O’ levels. I didn’t like Henry IV then, and I don’t like him now. He was a usurper who murdered his cousin Richard II in order to plant his Lancastrian backside on the…
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As Ricardians, we’re not all that impressed with the work of Dan Jones and have long considered him to be an accomplished writer of fiction. Well, now he really is a writer of fiction, and the book described below, “Essex Dogs”, looks an exciting and excellent tale of a group of archers and others…
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Edward V and Coldridge: the evidence so far
“halo”, “Lambert Simnel”, “Missing Princes Project”, “Perkin”, “Princes”, “Tudor” rebellions, Bermondsey Abbey, blond hair, Brooks, Cecily Bonville, Chris Brooks, Coldridge, Dan Jones, David Starkey, Deer, denialists, Edward IV, Edward V, Edward VI, Elizabeth Roberts, Elizabeth Wydeville, ermine, Evans chantry, groupthink, height, Henry VII, Henry VIII, heralds, John Ashdown-Hill, John Dike, Journal of Stained Glass, King’s Council, Latin inscriptions, Lord of the Manor, Martin Cherry, mtDNA evidence, Philippa Langley, Richard of Shrewsbury, Robert Markenfield, sanctuary, Sheen, Sir Henry Bodrugan, Sir James Tyrrell, Sir John Evans, Sir John Speke, Stoke Field, sunne in splendour, The Dublin King, The Mythology of the “Princes in the Tower”, Thomas Grey Marquess of Dorset, Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, white roses, William ShakespeareThanks to this Daily Telegraph article last December, the world is now far more aware of the distinct possibility that the former Edward V lived on as “John Evans” at Coldridge in Devon into the reign of Henry VIII, his nephew, as a parker minding deer for his half-brother Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset. In…
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… Walking Britain’s Roman Roads, in fact. It is quite a good series, in which Jones explores some of the most important of these, together with some aspects of Romano-British Society. The first episode takes him the length of Watling Street, the first part of which is now he M2, during which he visits the…
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A pleasant surprise
“Princes”, Avon-Kennet Canal, Birmingham, Bristol, Brunel, canals, centurions, Channel Five, Coventry, Crimewatch, Dan Jones, Edward II, Endeavour Morse, Grand Union Canal, Lancashire towns, Lancaster, Leeds-Liverpool Canal, Liverpool, London, Oxford, Oxford Canal, ports, rainfall, red hot poker, Richard III, Roman roads, The Wench is Dead, trade, transport, YorkshireIn recent years, Dan Jones’ posing and fanciful Crimewatch-style re-enactments, together with Starkeyesque conclusions formed before he started, has marred quite a few series on mediaeval history. Now he seems to have changed tack completely with this series, covering canal building from the middle of the eighteenth century and – yes – I rather enjoyed…
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The illustration above is from Dan Jones’s book Summer of Blood: the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Part of the caption is “Queen Joan, Richard II’s mother, pleading with the rebels as the Savoy burned”. Elsewhere in the same book, Joan is referred to as the queen mother. According to Merriam Webster, the first known…
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