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Category: Entertainment

Sunday Short Takes

* Dr. Susan Bordo is writing at new book called “The Creation of Anne Boleyn” and wants to hear from Anne Boleyn fans, particularly women 20 years old and younger. She and her research assistant Natalie have started a Facebook group for discussion: The Creation of Anne Boleyn

* Dame Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011) – Elizabeth Taylor, Mary I and Hans Eworth

* Lucy Worsley: ‘Lots of historians are sniffy about re-enactors’ – Interview with Lucy Worsley including information about her new series If Walls Could Talk

* Spotted at The Lady Jane Grey Reference Guide Blog – Lecture by Anna Whitelock “Woman, Warrior, Queen

“Secrets of the Virgin Queen” on US TV tomorrow

For those of you who get the National Geographic Channel, tomorrow night they will be running a show called “Secrets of the Virgin Queen” (and rerunning “Inside the Body of Henry VIII right after). Here’s a link to info on the show from the National Geographic Channel website.

(If the captions of the photos on the website are an indication, I don’t have high hopes… they call Robert Dudley “Arthur Dudley” in a few captions, although I think the final one that mentions him might actually be referring to the “Arthur Dudley” that was the supposed son of Elizabeth and Robert.)

Sunday Short Takes

* Details of Peterborough Cathedral’s 2011 Katherine of Aragon Festival have been posted at their website. Here’s littlemisssunnydale’s video from the 2010 candlelight procession that I linked to last year.

* Renaissance Fashion: The Birth of Power Dressing is the cover article from the January 2011 issue of History Today and is available to read on their website.

* I totally forgot to post about this ahead of time, but BBC America is starting to show “The Tudors”, so those who haven’t had a chance to see it on Showtime or DVD can catch it there. And I’ve heard that UK viewers will finally see Season 4 starting later this month!

Sunday Short Takes – Monday edition

Yeah, I was goofing off and watching DVDs that I received for Christmas and totally forgot to do yesterday’s blog post. 🙂

* A newly built Elizabethan house – an update on a story I first posted about back in November 2007

* The secrets of Parliament’s Victoria Tower uncovered – neat video from the BBC

* The BBC Tudors Collection coming in April – A box set of Shadow of the Tower, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, The Other Boleyn Girl, and Elizabeth R US Amazon pre-order link below for anyone who is interested:

The Shadow of the Tower finally coming to DVD

It’s hard for me to believe, but early next year the BBC is finally releasing “The Shadow of the Tower” on DVD! I first heard about this program a long time ago when I was putting together my Tudors in the Movies and on Television page and someone emailed me saying that the BBC had done a program on Henry VII during the years they also made the more well-known “The Six Wives of Henry VIII” and “Elizabeth R”. I searched in vain for more information on the program, tried finding it on video, and even wrote to the BBC at one point asking if they had plans to release it. I almost doubted that it had even existed until I found a companion book to the series that had a photo of James Maxwell as Henry VII on the cover. I would periodically search around to see if it had finally been released, and then one day one of my Google news alerts contained a link to this page from the TV Shows on DVD site: The Shadow of the Tower – Before Henry VIII had 6 Wives, Henry VII Established England’s Tudor Dynasty. I believe I actually squeaked when I saw it (I was at work, so anything louder might have startled a few people!).

I know Henry VII isn’t as sexy as his children and grandchildren and he is totally reviled by fans of Richard III, but I find him fascinating. I don’t know if the programs feature much of Henry’s life before 1485 (which is the part I find most interesting), but there is still plenty of politics and intrigue from his reign to fill out 13 hours. And of course, anyone who knows me will not be surprised that I’m very interested in seeing the portrayal of Jasper Tudor (who is in 6 of the episodes if my info is correct), as well as Margaret Beaufort.

The DVDs will be released on January 25, 2011 in the US (appropriately enough, three days before Henry VII’s birthday), but I haven’t been able to find a release date for the UK yet. If you’re interested in pre-ordering from Amazon through my affiliate store, here’s the link:

[edited to add UK ordering information]

The Death of Queen Jane

I was going to wait until we got a little closer to the release dates to post about Loreena McKennitt’s new album but then I realized that today is the day to post about it!

I’ve been a huge fan of Loreena McKennitt for years (her version of Greensleeves still makes me tingle) so I was very excited that she has a new album titled The Wind the Shakes the Barley out next month and as an added bonus, one of the songs on the new CD has a Tudor history connection. Several of Loreena’s previous albums have included poems or ballads set to music, such as The Lady of Shallot by Tennyson and the new album has The Ballad of Queen Jane, a popular ballad that dates from the 17th century. Folklorists have collected various versions of the ballad (I knew that folklore class I took a few years back would come in handy here someday!) and here is the version I’ve had in the poetry section of the site for ages: The Death of Queen Jane. Although the poem itself is not very historically accurate, I thought that the anniversary of Jane Seymour’s death would be an appropriate day to post about this.

You can listen to clips from the new CD on the Quinlan Road website and pre-order links to my Amazon affiliate store are below:

Sunday Short Takes

Just two stories again this week! But the first one is pretty funny. 🙂

* Henry VIII may have lied on his Match.com profile

* And a new book that I’ve been hearing about and realized that I hadn’t posted about to the blog: Helen Castor’s She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth, which sounds really interesting. It’s out in the UK now and will be out in February 2011 in the US. Usual Amazon link below:

Sunday Short Takes

* The October edition of History Today features Elizabeth I on the cover and you can read the article Elizabeth I: Exception to the Rule free on the site.

* The Vivat Rex! exhibition that was at the Grolier Club in New York last year celebrating the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII’s accession to the throne is now on at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC. Click the link for an online exhibition.

* The Harry Ransom Center (at the University of Texas – my alma mater and employer) has published a three-part series on Books of Hours, from medieval times to the post-Reformation period. The first part is here, with links to the second and third parts at the bottom of that page.

* The always entertaining Cracked.com posted 5 Fictional Stories You Were Taught in History Class and readers of this site might be interested to see what the number 1 entry is!

* The Tudors Complete Series DVD set will be coming out in the US on November 23 (just in time for the holidays!). Amazon pre-order link below:

Sunday Short Takes

* 525th anniversary of the Battle of Bosworth event staged on ‘wrong site’ – Be sure to check out the photos of the battle re-enactment

* From the Vaults: ‘Anna Boleyn’ (1920) – A movie blogger’s entertaining review of a 90-year-old Tudor film

* Primary sources related to Elizabeth I, From the Elizabeth Files. This is the type of list that I’ve been wanting to put together but, as with so many things, it’s still on the ‘to do’ list.

Sunday Short Takes

Here are several things that stacked up during my very busy week!

* Turkey presents Ottoman Sultan’s letter to Elizabeth I to UK

* Cash boost to restore Tudor dynasty church on Anglesey (This is the church that I’ve blogged about before here and here.)

* Restoration work at Stirling castle on Youtube – and here’s a link to the YouTube channel for Historic Scotland. The project is restoring parts of the castle to their appearance in the 1540s.

* A new website from the UK National Archives: legislation.gov.uk launched last week.

* Giant maze to open in Trafalgar Square – the hedge maze will be in the Square from August 2 to 6.

* And finally – the fourth and final season of The Tudors will be out on DVD in October in the US (I haven’t heard a UK release date yet, but I’ll update when I find out). Here’s a pre-order link through my Amazon affiliate account for anyone so inclined. 🙂

The Tudors’ revels now are ended

As most of you know, tonight is the series finale of Showtime’s The Tudors.

Spoiler alert!

(Henry VIII dies.)

It’s been an interesting four years for Tudor-philes with this series. I know my website traffic, email, blog questions, etc. have increased from people who have been watching the series and want to dig in to the real history behind what they were seeing – and that’s always a plus in my book. (The people wanting to learn history that is, not necessarily the increase in my email volume!) All in all, I’ve enjoyed it, even if I was occasionally frustrated with some of the “creativity” they used with the history (the sisters of Henry VIII being my biggest pet peeve).

Now I’m looking forward to the Starz mini-series of The Pillars of the Earth, Showtime’s The Borgias, and going in to some fantasy territory – A Game of Thrones on HBO. Starz also has a series called Camelot in development that sounds like fun. So there is definitely a lot of stuff that will fill the gap the end of The Tudors will leave in my entertainment schedule!

Sunday short takes

And to complete the catch-up on stuff, a Sunday short takes!

* BBC History Magazine offers a digital sample from their March 2010 issue (which has two Tudor history related articles)

* Spectator article about Mary Grey by Leanda de Lisle

* Little Miss Sunnydale’s Flickr set retracing Anne Boleyn’s coronation procession through modern London

* An article on the enduring popularity of the Tudors

* Design for Wolsey statue to be revealed in Ipswich

Six Dead Queens & an Inflatable Henry

Now this looks like fun – the Piccolo Theatre in Illinois has an upcoming play called Six Dead Queens & an Inflatable Henry! which will run from mid-April to early June.

Created by The Foursight Theatre Company in Wolverhampton, England in 1999, “Six Dead Queens and an Inflatable Henry!” is a devised theatre piece packed with intrigue, rowdy good humor, and duels of words. The action takes place in eternity where Henry’s consorts are forced to spend their days and nights vaulting over each other for the top spot and the answer to the question: Who is the true Queen?

The cast members have also been humorously blogging at Six Dead Queens during their research.