poetry
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After eleven revelatory history books in a decade, and two more forthcoming, this is very different. I wonder whether any of the subject matter is relevant to his research? There is only one way to find out.
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After the time of long barrenness, God first send Anne, which signifyth grace, In token that at her heart’s heaviness, He as for barrenness would from them chase. Harry, Edward, Edmund, each in his place Succeeded; and after twain daughter came Elizabeth and Margaret, and afterwards William. John after William next born was, Which both…
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Poet Bob Ferdinand wrote this sonnet about Richard and entered it into the Nebraska Shakespeare Sonnet Contest last summer, winning second prize (should have been first!) The Last Plantagenet In August, at late Summer’s teeming height, The last Plantagenet rode forth one day Defying Fortune, rising to the fight And risking all in battle’s bloodied…
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I have often wondered what Richard’s voice sounded like. Did he have a low or high tone to his voice, was it rich, nasal, reedy, soft? What was his accent like? Would it be like a Midlands accent, as has been proposed, or would there be hints of Yorkshire? Did he have a good singing…
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Several years ago I was out at Bosworth to attend an author signing with one of my favourite Ricardian authors, Sharon Penman, who wrote the mighty epic The Sunne in Splendour. We were staying in the Royal Arms at Sutton Cheney, which has a public room filled with armour, memorabilia, paintings of the battle and…
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A new single by the LEGENDARY TEN SECONDS is being released on iTunes and Amazon on December 1. MIDDLEHAM CASTLE ON CHRISTMAS EVE was written by Ian Churchward and Frances Quinn, who also painted the cover art, showing a ghostly party riding through the snow towards the ruined castle. Frances, who lives in Dublin,…
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I have just come upon the following couplet, concerning a historian’s mistakes:- ‘Others to some faint meaning make pretence But (——–) never deviates into sense.’ Well, the original two-syllabled name fled from my mind, to be replaced by another of similar construction. Starkey! Yes, folks, a couplet entirely suited to him. ‘Others to some faint meaning…
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Originally posted on Giaconda's Blog: ? Douce Dame Jolie was composed in the C14th by Guillaume de Machaut who lived between 1300 and 1377 around the area of Rheims in France. It follows the conventions of the ‘Ars Nova’ style which flourished in France and the Low Countries during the C14th and the structure…
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Originally posted on Giaconda's Blog: The common thread that runs through Anglo-Saxon poetry like the golden coils of a Sutton Hoo serpent is the nostalgic pain of longing for lost things. Again and again the same phrases are spoken in ‘Beowulf’ and in poems like ‘The Seafarer’ and ‘The Wanderer’. It feels as if one…
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