Italy
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Leonardo di ser Piero “da Vinci” (below left) was nearly six months older than Richard III, having been born in the Republic of Florence on 15 April 1452. Over his lifetime, which ended in 1519, he is best known for his paintings, such as The Last Supper or la Gioconda. However, he also left us…
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You may know or suspect from a previous post in Murrey and Blue, that Sir James Tyrrell, Richard’s henchman, was a direct descendant of Sir Walter Tyrrell, the ‘Killer Baron’, who fled during a hunting expedition with King William II (Rufus) after shooting him with an arrow. It is not known whether this was an…
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A pastoral tale
bacon, climate, Dominic Sandbrook, East Anglia, Edward I, Florence, Geoffrey Chaucer, George Orwell, Hanseatic League, Italy, Jerusalem, Lavenham, Mediaeval Warm Period, Medici, music, Peter and the Wolf, Peter Corbet, Prokofiev, sheep, Shropshire, T.S. Eliot, timber-framed houses, William Blake, wolves, wool, WoolsackThis article investigates why, as the Mediaeval Warm Period drew to a close, Britain (and particularly England) developed differently to many nations of Southern Europe. Sandbrook mentions two major cultural factors: the tradition of salting bacon because ham could not be dry-cured and the evolution of the wool trade through the systematic elimination of the…
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An award for masochism?
Edward IV, Elizabeth I, executions, exiles, George Duke of Clarence, Gertrude Blount, Henry Courtenay Marquess of Exeter, Henry Lord Montagu, Henry Pole the Younger, Henry VIII, Italy, Margaret of Salisbury, Mary I, Padua, Phillip II, Reginald Cardinal Pole, Sir Edward Neville, Sir Geoffrey Pole, Thomas Courtenay Earl of Devon, Tower of London, Wyatt RebellionThe 1538 plot first saw Sir Geoffrey Pole arrested that autumn and compelled, by a threat to torture his servants, to give evidence about the activities of his exiled brother Reginald and other relatives. Henry Pole Lord Montagu and Henry Courtenay Marquess of Exeter were arrested next, together with Montagu’s son Henry the Younger and…
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I have just completed my new novel, Richard Liveth Yet (Book II): A Foreign Country, an alternative history story in which Richard, having won at Bosworth, continues as King of England and pays a visit to Florence at the invitation of Lorenzo de’ Medici. On researching Lorenzo, I became intrigued by the number of parallels…
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