Suzannah Lipscomb lecture at Fordham University in New York

Unfortunately I’ve managed to miss posting about Suzannah Lipscomb’s other talks in the US, but I can at least get this one in under the wire:

“Prince to Tyrant: What Changed Henry VIII” by Suzannah Lipscomb, Research curator at Hampton Court Palace

Wednesday, 11 November 2009 at 6 p.m.
Fordham University
Tognino Hall
Duane Library
Rose Hill Campus
441 East Fordham Road
Bronx, New York 10458

Link to events at Fordham University’s History Department

Several stories of interest

Instead of bombarding everyone with a bunch of individual posts, here are three links that caught my eye in the past few days that I didn’t get a chance to post.

* From The Telegraph:
Rags to riches as tapestry masterpiece is restored to its former glory

A tapestry that has survived against the odds since the fifteenth century is to go on display for the first time in 20 years, following five years of restoration returning the masterpiece to its former glory.

* From The Guardian:
David Starkey on Henry VIII: Famous for 500 years

In this podcast, David Starkey asks why Henry continues to fascinate us in the 21st century, and how did a boy with such a conventional upbringing become such an unconventional king?

* From The BBC:
The map that changed the world

Almost exactly 500 years ago, in 1507, Martin Waldseemuller and Matthias Ringmann, two obscure Germanic scholars based in the mountains of eastern France, made one of the boldest leaps in the history of geographical thought – and indeed in the larger history of ideas.

Near the end of an otherwise plodding treatise titled Introduction to Cosmography, they announced to their readers the astonishing news that the world did not just consist of Asia, Africa, and Europe, the three parts of the world known since antiquity. A previously unknown fourth part of the world had recently been discovered, they declared, by the Italian merchant Amerigo Vespucci, and in his honour they had decided to give it a name: America.

More Bosworth Field investigation news

My Google news alerts went crazy with all of these articles on the Bosworth Field investigation! Here is my last post on the subject and I’ve linked to several of today’s stories below this excerpt from the Guardian article:

Five centuries of searching for one of Britain’s most significant battlefields has finally ended with the discovery of “extraordinary and unexpected” pieces of artillery in a Leicestershire field.

The finds near Market Bosworth at last pin down the notoriously “wandering site” of the battle that overthrew Richard III

New book – The Tudors: The Complete Story of England’s Most Notorious Dynasty

I received an email about a new book on the whole Tudor dynasty that is coming out next year (apologies to the person who sent it… this post was accidentally still sitting in my drafts folder!). I don’t have any additional information about it and there isn’t much on the Amazon page, but I’m sure more will come as the publication date gets closer.

The usual Amazon pre-order links below:

Real posts returning soon

Sorry I’ve been quiet for the past week, it’s been crazy at work (including two extra nights of working until 10 p.m. – thankfully my regular telescope night was rained out because three nights of working until 10 p.m. probably would have made me homicidal!). Next week will also be very busy, but I’ll do my best to keep up.

In the meantime, here’s a screen shot of my WordPress dashboard for this blog from last week showing that, for this blog at least, 99% of the comments are spam. Thank you Akismet for making it manageable!

New book – Cromwell to Cromwell: Reformation to Civil War

I received an email about this new book from The History Press – Cromwell to Cromwell: Reformation to Civil War

From the link above:

The English reformers of the 1530s, with Thomas Cromwell at their head, continued to have a strong belief in kingly rule and authority, despite their radical approach to the power of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church. Resisting the king was tantamount to resisting God in their eyes, and even on a matter of conscience the will of the king should prevail. Yet just over 100 years later, Charles I was called the ‘man of blood’, and Oliver Cromwell famously declared that ‘we will cut off his head with the crown on it’. But how did we get from the one to the other? How did the deferential Reformation become a redical revolution? Following on from his biography of Thomas Cromwell, John Schofield examines how the English character and the way it perceived royal rule changed between the time of Thomas Cromwell and that of his great-great-grandnephew Oliver.

And here is an info sheet about the book (PDF) which includes a discount offer.

And finally, the standard Amazon affiliate links below:

UK National Archives early maps of Ireland

From the BBC:

Wild wolves, fearsome chieftains, forts, castles and sea monsters – one could be forgiven for thinking this a fairytale. But it isn’t – this was the serious business of State map making – four centuries ago. Today, for the first time, The National Archives is launching a digitised collection of Early Irish maps (c.1558 – c.1610) from the ‘State Papers Ireland’.

The collection comprises more than 70 different maps , amongst the earliest cartographic representations of Ireland, depicting plantations, fortifications and townships during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I.
…
The maps were usually made in response to a particular threat, to show a siege or battle, or to help inform defence strategy against a background of ongoing clashes with Irish chieftains.

Maps were one of the English colonists’ tools, along with the written survey and the gun. They show information useful for defence, such as the location of castles and forts, difficult terrain for armies such as mountains and lakes, and strategic islands and river crossings.

The job of map making required quick-witted, brave and determined men who were willing to risk life to paint a picture of the countries beyond the seas from England.

Full article

Link to slide show of some of the maps

Link to the Irish Maps collection at the National Archives

Holbein painting of Henry VIII featured in The Bulletin

The headline made me do a double-take:

Henry VIII In Wedding Dress (1540) By Hans?Holbein The Younger

I know what they meant, but of course my brain instantly jumped to a vision of Henry VIII in white satin and lace with a bridal veil.

The article is an informational one about Holbein, his painting in general and specifically his portrayal of Henry VIII. Read it here

(And while I’m on a kick of being pedantic and talking about some of my reporting pet peeves, there is one in this article. Holbein was not at the British court, he was at the English court!)