No April Fools joke… I meant to post this while back but just got around to it today. More information on the show is up at the Showtime website: http://www.sho.com/site/tudors/

Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon (my picture is above, from my trip there in 1998) is trying to raise money for some much needed repairs. You can donate or join the Friends of Shakespeare’s Church at their website.

While I guess this isn’t strictly Tudor related (not like that has stopped me before), I was pleased to see that the first woman has been selected to the ranks of the Yeoman Warders at the Tower of London. Actually, I guess there is a Tudor connection, since they were started by Henry VII…

From the Times Online:

A woman has been appointed to the ranks of the Tower of London’s Yeoman Warders for the first time in their 500-year history.
…
The unnamed woman, who will take up her post this summer, was selected ahead of five men as one of the Tower’s tourist guides.

Full article

For those of you in the US, PBS will replay the Anne-Marie Duff “The Virgin Queen” this Sunday and next. As the saying goes, check your local listings!

Hello all! I hope everyone is having a good 2007 so far!

I meant to put something up on the news blog about the new design for the front page of TudorHistory.org, but bad weather, a satellite internet connection at home and getting caught up at work have all conspired against it.

So, yes, I’ve changed the front page again. I think the “window” design has only been up for two years (at the most), but I wanted something with smaller graphics and more text that *should* help people find what they are looking for a bit easier. At least, that’s the plan. Plus, this design matches the rest of the site a bit better. I might be tweaking the designs of the blogs a bit too, when I get a chance. Apologies to those who liked the old design better. At some point I’m going to put together a little gallery of all the old designs, since I have the files for most of the revisions from the old tudor.simplenet.com all the way through today.

Also, I’m going to start turning on comments for posts here at the news blog. I really didn’t have any reason to not have comments before, I just didn’t think about it. So from now on all my blogs will have comments turned on by default. I will have comment moderation turned on though, mostly to keep comment spam out.

Via Cronaca

A rare Henry VIII medal, military decorations and a Royal Marines helmet, belt and spurs proved to be the star attractions in Thomson, Roddick & Medcalf’s December auction.

The Henry VIII silver medal, marked Londini 1545, sold for £22,500 at the coin and numismatic sale at the firm’s auction house in Shaddongate.

Full article

Also mentioned at the BBC