Sunday Short Takes

The National Portrait Gallery’s The Real Tudors opened this week, so there was quite a but of coverage of that (although my pre-order of the accompanying book still hasn’t shipped from Amazon – grrrr).

* The Tudors as we’ve never seen them before

* National Portrait Gallery researchers reveal ‘airbrushed’ Elizabeth I in X-ray of portrait

* Tudor portraits exhibition at National Portrait Gallery reveals bug

Sunday Short Takes

Back with another round-up, including a few things I should have posted last week!

* This week’s BBC History Extra podcast features Tracy Borman speaking on Thomas Cromwell, the subject of her new book and cover article for BBC History magazine’s September issue.

* Also from BBC History Extra: 10 things you need to know about the battle of Bosworth

An update to a story that I posted about last year:

* Views fit for a Queen revealed at Kenilworth Castle

* Leicester’s Building at Kenilworth Castle reopened after more than 350 years

And just for fun…

* The top 10 codpieces in art

And finally – this may be my new favorite in the on-going series of “neat historical houses for sale that I’ll never be able to afford”:

Wings Place, Ditchling, Hassocks, East Sussex

Upcoming Books and Exhibitions for September 2014

Books

I missed it last month, so here’s Debra Bayani’s Jasper Tudor: Godfather of the Tudor Dynasty – now out in the US and UK. The Amazon links below go to the full color edition, but there is a less-expensive black and white one as well. Yes, this one is on my wish list as well – it’s great to see so much new interest in Jasper!

And Jessie Childs’ God’ Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England, which was released in the UK in March, is now out in the US.

In new books this month, The Real Tudors: Kings and Queens Rediscovered, the book to accompany the new display at the National Portrait Gallery in London (more info on that below) will be released in the UK and US on September 11. (And big thanks to the NPG for making this a reasonably priced paperback!!)

Next up is Dan Jones’ The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors (US title: The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors) will be out September 4 in the UK and October 14 in the US.

And finally, Thomas Cromwell: The Untold Story of Henry VIII’s Most Faithful Servant by Tracy Borman will be out on September 11 in the UK, but won’t be out until January 6, 2015 in the US.

New display

The Real Tudors: Kings and Queens Rediscovered

This new display at the National Portrait Gallery opens September 12, 2014 and will run through March 1, 2015.

From the NPG website:

his special display, focusing on the portraiture of the Tudor monarchs, will allow visitors to rediscover these well-known kings and queens through the most complete presentation of their images staged to date.
Works from the Gallery

Sunday Short Takes

It seems that I have things *mostly* back to normal, so here’s this week’s news round-up!

* 2015 Anne Boleyn Files Tudor Places Calendar Now Available – The 2015 version of Claire’s excellent calendar, once again filled with gorgeous images from submissions to the photo contest. (And no, I’m not getting anything for endorsing it, I’ve just really liked the past ones!)

* Richard III had lavish diet of swan and wine, new forensic study reveals – This is a summary of the research on the BBC History Extra site, but if you would like to read the original journal article it is available here: Multi-isotope analysis demonstrates significant lifestyle changes in King Richard III (Yay for open access!!)

And yet another entry in the “dream home” category:

This is Thurston End Hall, located in Suffolk about 10 miles away from Bury St. Edmonds. And it can be yours for the low, low price of

Doing some updates

Depending on when you see this post, things might look a little – or a lot – different than normal. As I mentioned last week, I’ve been having some big problems behind the scenes with the blog and today it was so totally hosed I had to nuke everything and start fresh from a back-up file. However, the only back-up I could get to work is the one that preserved all the text, but not the theme design and layout. So I’m going to have to piece that back together. It might not end up looking exactly the same as before, but it should be close enough to be recognizable.

And if I can get that back to (mostly) normal, there will be a Sunday Short Takes later. And then a few glasses of wine… 🙂

Sunday Short Takes

I only had one news story this week but it’s a pretty important one so I wanted to mention it:

* King Richard lll to be reinterred in March 2015 – The date of the service in which Richard lll will be finally laid to rest will be Thursday 26th March 2015. This is one of three services which will remember the life and death of the only Monarch of England without a marked grave. The mortal remains of Richard lll will be received into the care of the Cathedral on the evening of 22nd March, will lie in repose for 3 days and will be reburied on the morning of Thursday 26th. The following days, Friday 27th and Saturday 28th March, will mark the end of the journey with the reveal of the tomb and a service to mark the completion of the reinterment, and events which will look to the future having laid the King to rest.

And I wanted to put up a note in case any of you have had trouble accessing the blog over the past week or so. WordPress is occasionally a little wonky on this site (which I’m pretty sure is an issue with my hosting provider and isn’t the fault of WordPress) and last week it was very slow or down completely on and off. My host did some upgrades too, which might have been part of that. I think everything is behaving normally again for site visitors but you may still experience some slowness or connection time outs. In those cases, just try again later and hopefully it will be back up. There seem to still be issues on the Dashboard site of things (where I write posts and approve comments, etc.) so I don’t think all of the bugs have been worked out yet. Fingers crossed that it gets sorted since it would be a bit of a pain to move the site!

Upcoming Books and Exhibitions for August 2014

Books

James Evans’ Merchant Adventurers was released last year in the UK and the US version, with the slightly different title Tudor Adventurers, is due out on August 15.

And Terry Breverton’s Jasper Tudor: The Man Who Made the Tudor Dynasty will be out August 19 in the US and August 28 in the UK. (It won’t be a big surprise to anyone who has been around here for a while that I’m really looking forward to this one!)

Continuing events, exhibitions, and displays

* CLOSING AUGUST 1 – The Society of Antiquaries is holding a free exhibition of some of the Society

Sunday Short Takes

Get ready for a bunch of links this week!

The King Richard III Visitor Centre in Leicester opened this weekend, so here are a few articles related to that:

* Richard III: A look inside Leicester’s new visitor centre – This link from the Leicester Mercury has a short video tour

* Richard III visitor centre in Leicester opens its doors to the public

And in more archaeology news:

* Archaeological dig uncovers Rufford medieval church thought to have been destroyed by Henry VIII

* Help find Tudor mansion in Markeaton Park

Some more interesting stories that came along:

* Henry VIII’s armour returns to Leeds Castle after 500 years

* How Does It Feel? – Understanding the emotional lives of people in the past is one of the most difficult challenges facing the historian, argues Suzannah Lipscomb. – I thought this was interesting in light of the “feelings” questions I’ve gotten on the Q&A blog over the years.

* A Tudor-Stewart marriage: oak chest wedding gift for James IV and Margaret Tudor discovered

And some BBC History Extra Tudor podcast goodness:

* Richard III and dirty Tudors – The past week’s podcast

* Top 10 Tudor podcasts – and a round-up of past Tudor-related podcasts you might have missed

Just for fun:

* Could you become a citizen of Elizabethan England? – Another entertaining quiz from BBC History Extra (I always do their weekly quiz – to date I think I have gotten a perfect score on only one occasion)

And finally:

I only recently found the Society of Antiquaries You Tube channel and I’ve embedded one of their recent videos of a short informal gallery talk about Tudor portrait sets. There are more at the channel including a few about their portrait of Richard III.