Sunday Short Takes

Lots of interesting links this week!

* Hilary Mantel discusses Thomas Cromwell’s past, presence and future – The Wolf Hall author tells the Edinburgh book festival of her plans for the conclusion of her Tudor trilogy

* Sudeley Castle: the curious life and death of Katherine Parr – Sudeley Castle commemorates 500 years since the birth of Katherine Parr, the last of Henry VIII’s wives.

* Lambert Simnel, a counterfeit king – Once upon a time a good-looking Oxford youth, the son of a carpenter, was taken away from his home city and crowned King of England by an archbishop

Picture of the Week #187

Entrance to Hampton Court Palace. Photo June 2000.

This view looked a lot different today – and not just the gorgeous blue sky! This was the setting for the start and medal ceremonies for the Olympic cycling time trial events today, which I watched on an internet stream. There were some great aerial shots of the Palace and gardens, really showing off the area’s beauty.

Upcoming books

Time for another round-up of upcoming books (no events or exhibitions this month) – only two this time since a couple of books I originally had down for coming out in August have been moved back.

First up on August 7 in the UK and the US, Susan Ronald’s Heretic Queen: Queen Elizabeth I and the Wars of Religion

And second is The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I by Stephen Alford, which is out August 30 in the UK but not until November 13 in the US.

Sunday Short Takes

* Chance to get involved in Woking Palace history dig – A free ‘Dig for a Day’ scheme will be run at the monument in Carters Lane, Old Woking, with heritage teams on site from September 13 until the end of the month and the weekends open to let the community try their hand at archaeology. (Sounds like fun!)

* Wolsey’s Gate in Ipswich covered in graffiti – A piece of Tudor Ipswich, built by Henry VIII’s chancellor, has been covered in graffiti. (I will never understand people who vandalize…)

And finally, on a lighter note, the Olympic Torch and the Hampton Court maze –

Sunday Short Takes

Since a lot of stuff piled up while I was traveling for work (and then recovering from a cold I brought back with me) there will be a lot of links today!

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There were several articles about the discovery of medieval underwear in an Austrian castle last week. The items are of interest since they show that these types of undergarments are older than had been generally thought.

* Discovered in a castle vault, the scraps of lace that show lingerie was all the rage 500 years ago – From The Daily Mail

* Medieval lingerie – From History Extra

* Medieval lingerie from Lengberg Castle, East-Tyrol – From Universit

Picture of the Week #185

Moat and outer wall of Beaumaris Castle on the Isle of Anglesey in north Wales. Photo May 2000.

The Tudor connection is a little bit of a stretch, although not *too* much since Beaumaris is near (or maybe was part of?) the Tudor ancestral lands in north Wales. But this is one of my favorite photos from my visit there, so I had to use it eventually.

Traveling for work for a few days

I’ll be headed out to our observatory in west Texas for a few days and while I should have good internet access, I don’t think I’m going to have a whole lot of time to spend on the computer! So apologies in advance for any delays in approving blog comments and the lack of posts until early next week.

15 years!

Well, sort of, by one way of counting.

On July 1, 1997, I launched the stand-alone version of this site, which had previously been part of my personal homepage for a couple of years. As more and more people were contacting me about that part of my homepage, it became obvious that it was time to split it off into its own site. I moved everything to tudor.simplenet.com and re-routed all the traffic from the cumbersome address I had on the webserver at work (which was actually running on the desktop machine I was working on!). Three years later I bought tudorhistory.org and moved everything again, and that is where it has been ever since.

For grins, here is a screen cap of the site as it looked before I moved it off the old server:

(I’m still not sure why the first version of the vine had all-red flowers and not a proper red-and-white Tudor rose! Later I changed it from this four-petal version you see here to a better five-petal one.)

And here’s a link to the archive post on the blog from the move: Archive post: What’s New July 1997.

(This is one of the posts that I migrated over from the “What’s New?” and “Tudor News and Events” pages I used to run before I moved it over to a real blogging platform in March 2005.)

And while I’m at it, here’s a short update of what I’m working on at the moment: Some of you might have noticed that some of the pages have been (slowly) switching over to a slightly different design. I needed to update some of the search box code, so I took it as an opportunity to tweak a few things. I’m still slogging through the Glossaries and Who’s Who sections (which have the most pages to update) but I should have it finished by the end of the summer. Once that is done I’ll get back to working on adding more real content! I have a lot of research on title holders (church, nobility and government) and I’ve been compiling a portrait database for ages and am working on a good way to get that info on to the site. I’m also working on getting more illustrations and entries into the glossaries section. And of course, for everything I update I think of about 10 other things I want to do! As anyone who has developed and run a website knows, it is never truly “complete”.

Thanks for indulging me in this little trip down memory lane. 🙂

Upcoming books, events, and exhibitions

Time for another monthly round-up of upcoming events! Feels like I was just doing the last one…

Books

* David Loades’ Mary Rose, which came out in May in the UK, is still listed as due in July in the US. No specific date is listed on Amazon though. The US Kindle edition is available now.

* Maria Hayward is coming out with another great inventory work that she has edited, and this time it is actually relatively reasonably priced! (I still would like to find a copy of some of her other works like Dress at the Court of King Henry VIII for under $100!). This one is The Great Wardrobe Accounts of Henry VII and Henry VIII and is due out on July 19 in both the US and UK.

Events

Eastbury Manor House (which I mentioned back in March) will be having a Tudor Games day on July 7 as part of the Cultural Olympiad.

On Saturday 7th July 10.00 -16.00 Eastbury Manor House welcomes you to join us in a day of Tudor sports and pastimes as part of the celebration of the Cultural Olympiad.

There will be birds of prey to stroke, archery to watch and try, craft activities and some small Tudor games inside the house. A family ticket only costs