(I’d like to give a warm welcome to Kathryn Warner and thank her for the post. I’ll have a review of her excellent book up on Friday!) King Edward II is rightly remembered as one of the most disastrous kings England has ever produced. His reign of nineteen and a half years, July 1307… Read more Guest Post About Edward II from author Kathryn Warner
This post is for the lovely lady who admins the Tudor Fan Page on Facebook, who wanted to give her readers a quick & dirty summation of the theory that Henry VIII’s blood was positive for the Kell antigen and that he subsequently developed McLeod syndrome. Most people don’t know it, but red blood cells… Read more Hello Tudor Fan Page!
I recently stumbled across a historical blog whose post reduced me to tears of mirth. Literally, I laughed out loud and scared my dogs. The post was titled “The Support Group For People Unfairly Maligned In Historical Fiction” and it was one of the most hilarious tongue-in-cheek takedowns of semi-historical fiction I have ever read.… Read more How to make Edward II funny!
Although the general public remembers Henry VIII as a tart-chasing tartar, many modern historians such as Lacey Baldwin Smith have defended the king as a rather “prudish” man with more wives than mistresses. In her new book, The Six Wives & Many Mistresses of Henry VIII: The Women’s Stories, Amy Licence disagrees. She argues that… Read more The Six Wives & Many Mistresses of Henry VIII: The Women’s Stories
It is Guy Fawkes Night in Great Britain tonight! In a nutshell, Guy Fawkes Night, “is an annual commemoration observed on 5 November, primarily in Great Britain. Its history begins with the events of 5 November 1605, when Guy Fawkes, a member of the Gunpowder Plot, was arrested while guarding explosives the plotters had placed… Read more Bonfire Night Delight
Trim Castle, in County Meath, is a very picturesque pile of ruins nowadays: However, in it’s heyday (the 12th to 16th centuries; so a paltry 400+ years) it was the largest Anglo-Norman castle in Ireland. It held a strategically important position because stood guard over a fording point across the River Boyne. The River… Read more Trim Castle & St. Mary’s Abbey
A friend of mine, Claire Ridgway, who writes non-fiction books about the Anne and George Boleyn and who does not agree with the Kell/McCloud syndrome theory but is a nice person nonetheless, has launched The Tudor Society. It is “an exclusive membership club for all those who love Tudor history and who want to keep… Read more The Tudor Society
This weekend I bought and then voraciously read a book by Pauline Kiernan entitled Filthy Shakespeare. I was a wonderful read for a potty-mouthed Tudor enthusiast like myself, but is not for those whom the Anglo-Saxon derived earthy words for body bits and sex offend. Let’s just say that while the book dealt with Tudor… Read more Merry Old England
I am a big fan of author Jeannie Lin. She writes fiction set in Imperial China and it is hella well done. My favorite of her books are The Lotus Palace and The Jade Temptress. I cannot heap enough praise on them. Not only is she an excellent wordsmith, she is one of the rare… Read more Tudor China?
Those of you who are old enough to have enjoyed the music of the 80s doubtlessly remember Culture Club’s hit Karma Chameleon. I couldn’t resist the pun, and now I cannot resist describing Cromwell’s career trajectory as red, gold, and green. Yes, there is something wrong with my mind. Red: Although Anne Boleyn had been… Read more Karma Cromwellian