Sunday Short Takes

Here’s what caught my eye in the past week or so!

* How Thomas Wolsey made Hampton Court fit for a king

* Lucy Worsley: the fuss over Prince George was nothing compared to the uproar over Henry VIII’s son

* The Dublin King with John Ashdown-Hill – Interview with the author at Nerdalicious

* A Collection of Christmas Cokentryce!@TudorCook did a Storify of the three cokentryce cooked up at the Hampton Court Kitchens over the holidays

* Brave New Worlds: The Shakespearean Moons of Uranus – Podcast from the Folger Shakespeare Library (and includes a mention of McDonald Observatory, part of the department where I work!)

Upcoming books, talks and exhibitions

Updates to previous books that are already out in the UK – Suzannah Lipscomb‘s A Visitor’s Companion to Tudor England will be out in hardback in the US on April 24th. It’s already available on Kindle in the US (and it’s already in my hands thanks to Suzannah and her publisher – review coming after I finish Winter King!). That same day A.N. Wilson’s The Elizabethans is due out in the US in hardback and Kindle.

Another title in Macmillan’s Queenship and Power series (click the link for all of the titles in the series) – Retha Warnicke’s Wicked Women of Tudor England is due on April 10 in the US and UK:

Just in time for Shakespeare birthday celebration time, I, Iago by Nicole Galland, a novel based on the famous character from Othello, is due out on April 24th in the US and UK:

Alison Weir will be giving a talk about her upcoming book A Dangerous Inheritance at the Mary Rose Museum on April 4th. Although the book isn’t due out for a few months, they will have copies on hand for her to sign. More details at the Mary Rose Museum website.

Exhibitions

Sudeley Castle is celebrating the 500th anniversary of the birth of Katherine Parr for the next six months, starting April 1st when they open for the 2012 season. They also announced last week that the Duchess of Cornwall will be patron for the celebrations. Click on the logo for more information:

And finally:

The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich will be presenting – Royal River: Power, Pageantry and the Thames an exhibition that will run from April 27, 2012 to September 9, 2012.

Royal School of Needlework and the Royal Wedding Dress

I posted a neat news video a few weeks ago on the Sunday Short Takes about the Royal School of Needlework and they got a lot more attention recently when it was revealed that they worked on Catherine Middleton’s wedding dress. There is a press release at the RSN website with some of the details of their work.

I know my fellow needleworkers would like some more details and up close pictures, but they seem to be hard to come by! At least there are plans for the dress to go on public display. So here are some links I collected, including some pictures and interviews with the embroiderers who worked on the dress.

Royal wedding: Dress embroiderers were kept in the dark

Revealed: Kate’s ‘secret meetings’ with dress designer in Henry VIII’s favourite palace

Royal wedding: the team of women who worked in secret to create Kate Middleton’s dress and Related images

Update: The announcement has now been made about the dress going on display this summer at Buckingham Palace. You can read more at the Royal Collection website.

Queen honors Yeoman of the Guard and Henry VII

From The Telegraph:

Queen thanks Yeomen of the Guard on 500th anniversary of Henry VII’s death

The Queen expressed her thanks to the Yeomen of the Guard as she honoured the founder of the famous royal bodyguards.

More than 70 Yeomen – resplendent in their distinctive red and gold tunics, large white ruffled collars, scarlet stockings and flat brimmed black Tudor hats – gathered in Westminster Abbey in tribute to King Henry VII.

Henry VII created the Queen’s Body Guard of the Yeomen of the Guard in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth.

To mark the 500th anniversary of his death, the Queen placed a posy at his tomb in the Abbey’s Lady Chapel.

Full article

Tudor connection to Prince Charles’ new home

I have to admit that I was kind of amused at how they had to put in that the house was originally owned by someone related to Anne Boleyn. I guess they know what grabs the eyeballs these days! Well, and it is what caused the article to show up on my Google alerts…

From the BBC:

Prince Charles may have only recently bought his first home in Wales, but its royal connections go back centuries, an historian has discovered.

The original owner of Llwynywermod in Carmarthenshire was related to the second wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn.

Mark Baker, of Prestatyn, Denbighshire, unravelled the history of what was once one of Wales’ finest homes.

“I have uncovered that [the house] goes back to about the 13th or 14th Centuries when it was owned by relatives of Anne Boleyn, Henry V111’s second wife.

“And the Griffies-Williams family in the early 18th century were quite close to the royals and received a baronetcy.

Mr Baker said the house’s renaissance only began about 10 years ago when the previous owner John and Patricia Hegarty bought the farm and land for

Changes to the rules of succession

Although this isn’t strictly Tudor-related, I’m sure that some of you would find this interesting. I remember there was some discussion of this 5-10 years ago… Hmmm, I wonder how Henry VIII would feel about these particular changes. 🙂

From The Guardian:

Downing Street has drawn up plans to end the 300-year-old exclusion of Catholics from the throne. The requirement that the succession automatically pass to a male would also be reformed, making it possible for a first born daughter of Prince William to become his heir.

Full article

Top o’ the tiara to Jean for the link

Slightly off-topic: Happy Birthday Queen Elizabeth II!

Celebrating the Queen’s 80th Birthday

The reason I say “slightly” off-topic, instead of just plain off-topic is that Elizabeth II is a descendent of Henry VII. Okay, maybe that’s stretching it, but it was a good opportunity for me to finally put up the big genealogical tree from William the Conqueror to Elizabeth II that has been rotting on my thumbdrive forever. I meant to put this up ages ago but it got lost in the shuffle. You can see the file here (120K jpg).

I am hoping that this is the first of many of these I’ll put together in the future. I had always wanted to try my hand at making my own charts in Photoshop (instead of trying to mark them up in HTML) so people could download or print them as references. A lot of books will put the basic one (Henry VII to Elizabeth), but there are other families that might be useful, so maybe I’ll get some of those up too. I also want to redo a couple of the images I have on the site now, which were scanned from books. I am pretty sure there are a couple of errors in the one of the Descent of Henry VIII’s wives from Edward I, so I might redo (and slightly simplify) that one. I also would like I better one of the descent from Henry VII to James VI/I.

For now, back to sorting through Church and nobility titles… I’ve been doing a big update on that section and it is taking for bloody ever!

(original links have expired and have been removed)

Irony of Prince’s Wedding Delay

I noticed this when I was scanning through the news headlines this morning. I’m glad to know that I wasn’t alone in thinking of the interesting ties of the Pope’s funeral and the wedding of the heir to the British throne to Henry VIII!

(original links have expired and have been removed)

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Archive Post: Death of the Queen Mother

Many condolences to the Royal Family and the British people on the death of the Queen Mother. She was much loved all over the world and we share your grief.

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