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.

Picture of the Week #86

A section of Lord Leycester Hospital, Warwick. Photo May 1998.

The Lord Leycester Hospital is named in honor of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who came in to possession of the old medieval guildhall buildings and chapel (which range from Norman to 14th century). Dudley created the Hospital as a retirement facility for old soldiers and their wives, a function it still serves today.

This is another place on my “to visit again” list since I didn’t actually get a chance to go in to the building when I was there in 1998.

The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare

I really need to start checking my draft posts folder more often! I’ve had this one in there for a couple of months, so my apologies that I’m just now posting about it.

The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare

IN LONDON IN THE WINTER OF 1795, a 19-year-old apprentice named William-Henry Ireland pretended he

Archaeologists dig at Kirk o’ Fields

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

Sunday Short Takes

* 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:

TannerRitchie Publishing Summer Sale

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.

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. 🙂

Picture of the Week #79

Carving in the Beauchamp Tower of the Tower of London. Photo May 2003.

This carving was done by John Dudley (the son of John Dudley Duke of Northumberland) while he and his brothers were held in the Beauchamp Tower following the short reign of Lady Jane Grey and the Wyatt Rebellion in the reign of Mary I.

The carving reads: “You that these beasts do well behold and see, may dem with ease wherefore here made they be, with borders eke within [there may be found] 4 brothers names who list to search the ground.”

Sunday short takes

This is the first time in a few weeks I’ve had a few stories stack up so I could do a “short takes”!

* First up, from Foose, a review from the Spectator of G.W. Bernard’s book “Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions” (which I posted about back in February)

* More excavations at the site of The Theatre in Shoreditch (previously mentioned here and here) are going on this summer, and you can follow along at the Museum of London’s “Working Life of the Museum” blog (here’s a , , , 1