Just a couple of stories today:
* Elizabeth Jenkins dies at 104 – Articles from the New York Times and from The Telegraph. Two of Ms. Jenkins’ books were some of the first I picked up when I started to collect them in earnest – “Elizabeth the Great” and “Elizabeth and Leicester”
* Sotheby’s to auction a Shakespeare First Folio and a collection of letters from Elizabeth I, Cecil and more (and not Tudor-related – but really cool – Audubon’s “Birds of America”)
Since I was off doing my Labor Day cookout on Sunday, I figured I would so my Sunday blogging on Labor Day. 🙂
* Shakespeare’s face recreated for UK HIstory Channel program called “Death Masks”
* Reformation documents go on show – New exhibition from the National Library of Scotland. Additional article here.
* Hilary Mantel’s award-winning “Wolf Hall” is now available in paperback in the US (Amazon links below, of course). Macmillan has a nice page up for the book that includes links to a book club discussion guide, videos and more.
* 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.
From the BBC:
Archaeologists at the University of Edinburgh are hoping to uncover the scene of a historical unsolved crime.
Work has begun to unearth remnants of buildings which became infamous for the murder of the second husband of Mary Queen of Scots, Lord Darnley.
The remains of the buildings have been buried beneath Old College for more than 200 years.
The dig is being carried out prior to a
* Bosworth Battlefield Anniversary Re-enactment at the Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre and Country Park on August 21 and 22nd. Also, if you are descended from someone who fought at the Battle of Bosworth, the Centre wants to hear from you! Here’s an article about the search for descendants: Visitor Centre curators in search to locate descendants of men from the Battle of Bosworth, as well as this article with the headline that seems to imply they only want people from Richard III’s side, even though the article explains further: Did your ancestors fight for Richard III?
[Added August 9 – Here’s another article on this that I had to add. Apparently someone at BBC Leicester thinks “ancestor” and “descendant” are interchangeable terms: Search for ancestors of Battle of Bosworth soldiers]
[Updated August 10 – The BBC article has now been corrected.]
* An update on the development plans for Westminster Abbey that I blogged about back in 2009. Unfortunately they will not be going ahead with the plan to add a corona to the Abbey at this time but they will be finishing the new cafe and the plans to open the Triforium (which I’m really looking forward to seeing one day!).
* An interesting article from the Guardian about accuracy in historical fiction: The lying art of historical fiction
* Little Miss Sunnydale has posted a neat Mary I themed tour of London on her Mary Tudor: Renaissance Queen blog
* And finally, Philippa Gregory’s latest novel, The Red Queen came out last week in the US and will be out in a couple of weeks in the UK. It continues her look at the Wars of the Roses, this time from the perspective of Margaret Beaufort. I haven’t read any of Gregory’s books, but I’m tempted to pick this up since Margaret is one of my Tudor interests and I’m curious to see how she fares in the author’s hands, especially since she hasn’t been featured very often in fiction. Standard Amazon links below:
If you’re itching to get into reading some primary source documents, this is a good time to stock-up on ebooks from TannerRitchie – downloads are on sale for $10 through August 15. They are also offering a 10% discount on Medieval and Early Modern Sources Online (MEMSO) short-term access subscriptions.
For those not familiar with TannerRitchie, they publish hundreds of rare and out of print historical sources as ebooks and specialize in British History, especially Tudor and Stuart England, British Colonial history (especially in North America and the Carribean), Medieval history and Scottish medieval and early modern history.
You can keep up with sales and new titles through their blog, Twitter and an RSS feed of new publications.
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. 🙂
Spotted via the Lady Jane Grey Reference Guide Blog, an article about Katherine and Mary Grey by Leanda de Lisle at The Mail Online this weekend:
Loved-up then locked up by the Virgin Queen: The story of Katherine and Mary Grey
Few people remember them today, but nearly 500 years ago Katherine and Mary Grey
From The Portsmouth Historic Dockyard website:
Could a 500 year old map have contained clues to where the wreck of the Mary Rose lay and could this be the first time Portsmouth maps have returned to the city in over 400 years? All these fascinating questions will be raised in a brand new temporary exhibition of international cartographic importance, in the Mary Rose Museum at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard from 2nd July to 17th October 2010.
Mapping Portsmouth’s Tudor Past brings together, for the first time, several important maps from The British Library, UK Hydrographic Office and the Admiralty Library. All but one of these maps are hand-drawn and are works of art in their own right. Together they give us a unique and fascinating insight into Tudor Portsmouth and the view of their world 500 years ago.
The Mary Rose Trust are delighted that the British Library are loaning 5 unique items for this exhibition including the centrepiece of the display, which will be two stunning large-scale maps of Tudor Portsmouth, one dating from 1545 (the year the Mary Rose sank defending the country from French invasion), which is the earliest scale map of an English town and one of the earliest in Europe, and the other dating from 1552, which was probably made for the visit of Edward VI to Portsmouth on the 9th August 1552.
The exhibition also includes two important maps of the Solent from the collection of William Cecil, Elizabeth I
From “History Today”:
A rare medieval prayer roll that once belonged to Henry VIII goes on display, today, in the British Library
Update: Here’s a link to an article from the BBC on the statue effort
From The Western Telegraph:
A former Pembroke Castle guide is campaigning to instate a statue of one of the building’s most famous residents in the town.
Henry VII, the first Tudor King was born in the castle and lived there until he was 11- years- old.
Local resident Mel Phillips is now looking at ways of putting up a statue to commemorate the link. She has won the backing of the manager of the castle and is now exploring ways to fund the project and asking the town
From the Westminster Abbey website:
HM The Queen, Visitor of the College of St Peter in Westminster, and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh attended a Service on Friday 21 May 2010 to Celebrate the 450th Anniversary of the Collegiate Foundation of St Peter in Westminster Abbey.
The Charter granted by Queen Elizabeth I on 21 May 1560 re-founded the former Benedictine monastery at Westminster as the Collegiate Church of St Peter under the governance of a Dean and Chapter and as a Royal Peculiar, that is not subject to bishop or archbishop but directly answerable to The Sovereign.
The Queen also unveiled a statue of Queen Elizabeth I at Westminster School, which you can see photos of here.
From the Lambeth Palace webpage for the exhibition, which opens next Monday:
Highlights of the exhibition include:
* The MacDurnan Gospels, written and illuminated in Ireland in the 9th century
* The Lambeth Bible, masterpiece of Romanesque art
* 13th century Lambeth Apocalypse
* A Gutenberg Bible printed in 1455, the first great book printed in Western Europe from movable metal type
* Books owned and used by King Richard III, King Henry VIII, Queen Katherine of Aragon, Queen Elizabeth I and King Charles I as well as landmark texts in the history of the Church of England
* An exceptionally rare edition of the Babylonian Talmud which survived a 1553 Papal Bull ordering all copies to be burnt, which was rediscovered in 1992
* The warrant for the execution of Mary Queen of Scots
* Papers of archbishops, bishops and leaders of church and state, ranging from the 13th century to the modern day, including papers relating to the rebuilding of St Paul’s Cathedral after the Great Fire and physicians’ reports on the illness of King George III.
See the webpage for information on times, tickets, etc.
And here are a few news site articles on the event:
From the Daily Mail – Palace of treasures: Archbishop of Canterbury’s exhibition tells Britain’s story (Some good images on this article)
From The Times – Palace unveils historic hoard of a sticky-fingered prelate
From The Guardian – Lambeth Palace to exhibit 400 years of religious and royal treasures
For those of you in the area (and how I wish that *I* was!) – Leanda de Lisle will be giving a free lunchtime lecture on Thursday at 1:15 p.m. at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
The talk is titled: A Picture of Innocence: Lady Jane Grey and Her Sisters
More information from the NPG website
(Thanks to Leanda for sending the info so I could pass it on to all of you!)
* The dig at Shakespeare’s New Place that I’ve mentioned previously has a website where you can follow the excavation and see what they’ve been finding: http://www.digforshakespeare.com/
* Little Miss Sunnydale has posted photos from a visit to Ludlow Castle, along with information on Princess Mary’s time there.
* Gareth Russell has been blogging the fall of Anne Boleyn as it happened in 1536.
The posts so far:
May 1st, 1536: May Day and May 2nd, 1536: The Queen’s Arrest
(Images from the Hampton Court Facebook fan page. See the gallery for larger versions.)
And yes, you can sample it (in both red and white) for
Short round-up this week!
* Follow-up to the story from the Sunday short takes two weeks ago – Design for statue of Cardinal Wolsey revealed
* Conservation work beginning on the Coronation Chair at Westminster Abbey – There is an interesting short video story linked at the bottom of the page.
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
I totally forgot about several posts in my “draft” folder! So this article is a couple of weeks old – sorry!
Here’s an article by the author of “Death and the Virgin”, Chris Skidmore, from The Express:
A TUDOR MURDER MYSTERY
Was Elizabeth I implicated in the death of Amy Robsart, neglected wife of dashing Lord Robert Dudley, widely believed to have been the Queen’s lover? The author of a new book, Chris Skidmore, has fresh evidence.
It is a 450-year-old mystery that has baffled generations of historians.
One September afternoon in 1560, Amy Robsart, the wife of Lord Robert Dudley, Queen Elizabeth I
I received an email from a documentary researcher looking for Tudor scholars in New York or London. If you fit that requirement and are interested, let me know and I’ll put you in touch!
