Welcome to August, the month that *should* mark the end of summer, but I live in a Texas and summer can stretch all the way into October some years. (I can’t complain too much this year though, we’ve caught a bit of a break over some of the recent summer hellscapes we’ve had.)
Books
This month we have a couple of books coming out in the US that were previously released in the UK – first up is Six Lives: The Stories of Henry VIII’s Queens, the companion to the current exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery (see below), which will be released in the US on August 20.
And Courting the Virgin Queen: Queen Elizabeth I And Her Suitors by Carol Ann Lloyd will come out in the US at the end of August.
And in new books this month, The Tragic Life of Lady Jane Grey by Beverley Adams will be out at the end of August in the UK and the end of October in the fall.
Continuing Exhibits
The National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition, Six Lives: The Stories of Henry VIII’s Queens opened on June 20 and runs through September 8. Click through for more information on the many related events the gallery will be hosting!
About the exhibition:
Tudor paintings by Hans Holbein the Younger and contemporary photography by Hiroshi Sugimoto meet in the National Portrait Gallery’s first exhibition of historic portraiture since reopening, presenting a study of the lives and afterlives of the six women who married Henry VIII.
Six Lives will chronicle the representation of Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard and Katherine Parr throughout history and popular culture in the centuries since they lived. As a frequent source of fascination, the stories of the six women has repeatedly inspired writers and artists of all kinds to attempt to uncover the ‘truth’ of their lives: their characters, their appearance and their relationships. From historic paintings, drawings and ephemera, to contemporary photography, costume and film, the exhibition draws upon a wealth of factual and fictional materials to present the life, legacy and portrayal of six women who forever changed the landscape of English history.