I think we all know the old saw about how for the want of a nail a kingdom was lost. Well, it became a proverb because it is true. It is the little things on which history often pivots. Lewis of Caerleon is one of those small things on which the arc of history depended. Lewis… Read more Lewis of Caerleon
Geoffrey V of Anjou was born on 24 August 1113, the eldest son of Foulques V d’Anjou and Eremburga de La Flèche, daughter of Elias I of Maine. He was the heir to several important titles and properties, and he grew into a good-looking, strapping young lad as well. He was often called Geoffrey le… Read more The Man Who Sired the Angevin and Plantagenet Dynasties
The is an episode of Star Trek (Original Series) called “The Enemy Within” that’s stuck with me since I was a kid. The premise is simple – “A transporter malfunction splits Captain Kirk into two halves: one meek and indecisive, the other violent and ill tempered. The remaining crew members stranded on the planet cannot… Read more Star Trek, Edward I, and the Execution of William Wallace
The outcome of the Battle of Bosworth Field was incredibly unlikely. People forget, now the the event is history and seems set in stone, how discombobulating everything must have been at the time, not least of all for Harri Tudur. You see, the man we think of as King Henry VII, founder of a dynasty and… Read more Bosworth, with Betrayal and a Brandon
One of the most interesting things about the Regency Era, to me, if how universally loathed the Prince Regent was, and how much he set the fashion for the Glittering Throng nonetheless. One of the things the future George IV brought into style was going to Brighton for a bit of time by (and in)… Read more Brighton, By George!
The Battle of Shrewsbury occurred on 21 July 1403 between the forces of King Henry IV of England (AKA Henry of Bolingbroke) and those of the rebelling Henry “Harry Hotspur” Percy, the 1st Earl of Northumberland. Henry IV had made Henry Percy a whole bunch of promises about how Hotspur would be rewarded if he backed… Read more The Battle of Shrewsbury
The longest-lived of Henry VIII’s sons, Henry Fitzroy, was born on 15 June 1519. Unfortunately for the king, this son was born on the wrong side of the blanket. Bessie Blount, a minor nobleman’d daughter, had given Henry what his queen, Katherina of Aragon, had tried to give him so many times in the past — a… Read more Henry Fitzroy Is Born
One of the best things about the Georgian Era was the 1807 Act suppressing the slave trade. King George III, die-hard conservative Tory and intermittently insane though he may have been, agreed with the majority of the Tories and Whigs that the slave trade was a disgusting affront to God and Humanity and Decency and… Read more Huzzah for the HMS Pickle!
Hey, remember the time in the middle of WWI when England and France agreed to divvy up the Middle East between them and screw over every Arab alive just as soon as they defeated the Ottoman Empire? No? Well, don’t worry about it; we don’t talk about it much in Western history classes so you… Read more The Sykes–Picot Agreement
Mary Tudor and Charles Brandon, Viscount Lisle and future Duke of Suffolk, wed for a third and final time on 13 May 1515. The Tudor princess seems to have loved Brandon since she was a girl, and she was as determined as the rest of her siblings to marry for love. Since she was as headstrong and brave… Read more Happy Anniversary to Mary and Charles