The Westminster Abbey choir will be performing a concert on Nov. 20 to mark the 450th anniversary of Mary I’s death and Elizabeth I’s accession to the throne, and will be releasing a CD of period music. More details here.
You can order the CD through Amazon US and UK here:
(Thanks to TudorRose for the info!)
With the news that Cambridge and Oxford have joined in, I thought it was time to bring attention to iTunesU for anyone who hasn’t heard of it before now. Basically, colleges and universities have started joining in with Apple to podcast audio and video of lectures, as well as information about their schools for potential students, etc. Some universities have been doing things like this through their own websites, but having them all under one umbrella at iTunes is pretty useful.
I haven’t had a chance to check for any Tudor history specific lectures yet, so if anyone finds some please post them in the comments. I downloaded the 50 minute “Monarchy” lecture by David Starkey (over 400MB!) from Cambridge but I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet.
Actually more Elizabethan this time, I guess.
From ElleUK:
From the opening outfit, which paid homage to Elizabethan dress, featuring a latex ruff collar atop a dress with latex ruffled underskirts – it was clear that Pugh was staying true to form and had stepped up to the plate.
Related post: http://tudorhistory.org/blog/2008/02/19/tudor-fashion-trends/
From Broadcastnow.co.uk:
David Starkey is to produce a four-part “psychological profile” of Henry VIII for Channel 4.
The as-yet-untitled series will go beyond the facts of Henry’s six wives and his split with the Catholic church to piece together a sense of his character and motivations.
The first 60-minute episode will show Henry as a highly intelligent child, while subsequent episodes will paint him as a brilliant “A-list celebrity” character with an over-developed ego and “solipsistic sense of self”.
Oh well, there goes my theory that they were leading up to a fat Henry VIII with that final scene of him tearing into a bunch of food at the end of season 2…
I’ve seen this bit of news come through in a bunch of places, so here is just one of the many links to the story.
The second season of “The Tudors” will be out on DVD in the US on December 30. Not quite in time for Christmas, but close enough.
Here’s the US Amazon pre-order link. Amazon UK info is down a few posts.
No official announcement on the US release yet, but I’ll post it when I hear something. The release date for the UK discs is October 13, 2008. (Pre-order link at Amazon UK)
I’m guessing that no matter how inaccurate the history in the series is, we won’t be seeing Anne of Cleves doing a soul or R&B number.
From the BBC:
Singer Joss Stone is to play Anne of Cleves in the third season of The Tudors, the BBC has confirmed.
It will be the first TV acting role for the 22-year-old, who made her debut in fantasy film Eragon in 2006.
…
The third series of the Tudors will follow the King as he weds third Queen Jane Seymour, played by Anita Briem, and then Anne of Cleves.A daughter of a German nobleman, Anne was betrothed to Henry in a marriage treaty after the King was shown a portrait of her.
Found via Permanent Record
Check out this knitted Anne Boleyn with a detachable head. She’s planning on doing more and releasing the basic pattern. It’s probably a good thing I don’t knit since I’m already working on the Six Wives in cross stitch and have plans for a Six Wives quilt!
Or should that be Henry the Hut?
Worth1000.com had a Star Wars art photoshop contest and the entry above caught my eye. 
It looks like Showtime’s execs are planning to take it through to wives 5 and 6 in a fourth season, but it doesn’t sound like there are plans to go to the other monarchs. Too bad… they could have some fun in Edward VI’s and Mary I’s reigns, especially since those haven’t gotten a lot of play of late with Elizabeth getting most of the screen time. Although the Lady Jane Grey storyline would have to come from somewhere inventive since the Mary/Margaret story got changed so much in the first season.
“The Tudors” picked up two nominations this time, for Best Casting and Best Costumes for a series. I’m kind of surprised that they didn’t get a few more since I thought the second season (in particular the finale) was stronger than the first. Oh well!
Here’s the full list from The Emmys
From The Welwyn & Hatfield Times:
Universal Studios in California has loaned some of the outfits used in Elizabeth: The Golden Age for a new exhibition.
Parts of the movie, which stars Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush and Clive Owen, were filmed at the stately home.
And the display ties in with the 450th anniversary of Elizabeth I’s accession to the throne - which she discovered while she was at the Old Palace in Hatfield.
First up - Live in Ireland and have a baby due in July? If so, you might be able to get your child a part in the third season of “The Tudors”, which is now casting for the part of the baby Prince Edward (the future Edward VI). You can read more about it here, with contact details.
Second, for the first time the US Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has issued a short list for the shows being considered for Best Comedy and Best Drama series. Usually they just announce the final nominees, but this time they are releasing a list of 10 for each category. And you’ve probably guessed by now that “The Tudors” made the short list for drama. You can see the full list here.
Just in case anyone comes looking for these after last night’s finale of “The Tudors”, I thought I would go ahead and post links to these on both of the blogs.
The first is an excerpt from Kingston’s letter to Cromwell and the second is Anne’s speech at the scaffold. Both are modernized spelling versions. I think I got them from “Eyewitness to History” or a similar book.
I’ve only seen it in a couple of places, but it looks like there might be a movie version of the sequel to “The Other Boleyn Girl” - “The Boleyn Inheritance”, which goes on to the stories of Anne of Cleves, Kathryn Howard and Jane Parker Boleyn, George’s widow. I’ll post more if anything definite shows up.
Coming June 10 for the US and June 30 for the UK!
Here are the US Amazon links (regular and Blu-ray):
And the UK Amazon link:
And here is a .doc file of the Press Release for those who are interested!
I got an email from Showtime asking me to pass along the link for “The Tudors” at Metacritic:
http://www.metacritic.com/tv/shows/tudorsseason2?q=the%20tudors#users
You can add your own rating by clicking on “rate this tv show” under the Users rating button on the right hand side of the page.
It’s official.. we’ll be on to wives three and four next year! Filming will begin in June.
There are a ton of articles out there about it, so here is a just a sampling:
USA Today - Showtime orders more tales from ‘The Tudors’
Most of the rest of the articles seem to basically be excerpts from the press release, so I won’t bother linking to more… yeah, I’m lazy tonight.
I wasn’t planning on posting this originally, since it sort of covers territory of other articles I’ve recently posted, but since several people have mailed me the link, I guess I had better post it!
From The New York Times:
Among the many things for which he will be remembered, Paul Scofield, who died on Wednesday at 86, helped to usher in a whole era of classy, lushly produced costume films set in the Tudor period. He made the 16th century seem glamorous.
…
“A Man for All Seasons” was so evocative and so good-looking — and such a draw at the box office — that it spawned dozens of imitations. For a while you could hardly go to the movies or turn on highbrow television without seeing people in doublets, hose and ruffs, writing with quills. You would have thought the appeal would be worn out by now, but decades later our fascination with Henry and his wives, if not with More, oddly persists. We know some of this stuff better than our own history.
