It’s official.. we’ll be on to wives three and four next year! Filming will begin in June.
There are a ton of articles out there about it, so here is a just a sampling:
USA Today – Showtime orders more tales from ‘The Tudors’
Most of the rest of the articles seem to basically be excerpts from the press release, so I won’t bother linking to more… yeah, I’m lazy tonight. 🙂
If any of you were reading on the RSS feed and stumble back here wondering why nothing has shown up lately, it’s because WordPress doesn’t publish its feeds the same way Blogger did, so you will have to resubscribe to the site with the link at the bottom of the sidebar on the right. Sorry about that!
And if Blogger ever does start to publish correctly again, I’ll try to get a post out on the old feed to tell people to come over to the new one. I have no idea if or when that will ever happen though, the way things are going!
Just in case anyone wanders over here from the Q&A blog, I thought I would post something about the problems that are continuing with publishing from Blogger.
Sometime on Friday, things just stopped working and nothing would publish from Blogger to my site. So, I popped over to the Blogger discussion forums and discovered that lots of other people were reporting the same issues. A similar thing happened last September, but it only lasted for about 3 days that time. We’re now up to 6, and I’m very, very frustrated – and quite disappointed with the lack of response from the Blogger folks (on their own forums!). I’m still not sure why two posts have been able to squeak through since the problems started, but since the issues are continuing, it certainly hasn’t been fixed.
So, I’m going to give it another few days and if it isn’t fixed, I’ll migrate that blog over to WordPress too. Things will be down for a few hours, but considering that they haven’t been working properly for 6 days, a few hours shouldn’t be a problem!
Since Blogger still hasn’t managed to fix the publishing problem that I (and many others) have been having for almost a week now, I’ve decided to start migrating all the blogs over to WordPress, which comes with my web hosting package. I’ve managed to get over the posts and comments from the old blog, but I’m going to have to re-link all the pictures. There will probably be some kinks for the next week while I tweak things here and there. For those of you reading on the RSS feed, hopefully there won’t be any interruption.
I think the switch is going to be a good thing since it will allow me more flexibility in what I can add to the blogs in the future.
If anyone comes across any problems, please email me: lara@tudorhistory.org
Every once in a while a property listing will come through on my Google News alerts (like the one for Rochford Hall about this time last year) and I just melt when I see them. It also reminds me that I should probably buy at least one lottery ticket a week…
This one is called West Stow Hall and is near Bury St. Edmunds. It’s not as grand as some houses I’ve seen up for sale, it just grabbed me when I saw it. The full listing is here, with several more pictures, including interiors (with a bunch of wonderful beams!!).
When I used to look through picture books of England as a child, one of the things I remember noticing in the old photos (probably mostly taken in the 60s and 70s) was the dark coating from pollution on some of the buildings, in particular the Tower of London (the White Tower) and Westminster Abbey. By the time I saw these buildings in person for the first time (May 1998), the Abbey and the south face of the White Tower had been all cleaned up and were strikingly bright compared to their previous condition. Now, the other three faces of the White Tower are setting cleaned and conserved in preparation for the 2012 Olympics in London.
You can find out more about the project and follow the project manager’s diary at the project website at the Historic Royal Palaces site. There is also information on a new display at Hampton Court about the young Henry VIII, since we’re approaching the 500th anniversary of his accession to the throne.
From “The Independent”
Shakespeare’s “lost” local church in London may have been found
I was looking through some folders on my laptop to see if I could weed some stuff out, and I found the folder that had the last version of my personal website before I moved it and the Tudor section over to their own respective sites at Simplenet. Above is the graphic that was the “gateway” from my main page to the first Tudor webpages I ever made, somewhere in late 1994, I’m pretty sure… I know I definitely had it going by the time I moved to my current job in 1995.
I still can’t believe how far the internet and my website have come since those early days!
(Thanks for indulging me in a little reminiscing!)
10 years ago when I first started the TudorTalk email list, my very first subscriber was Amanda Grayson. The funny part is with potential subscribers from across the planet, the first one lived just a few miles away from me! To honor the 10th anniversary of the list, I’m making this one-time request.
Amanda is riding in a local charity bike ride called the Armadillo Hill Country Classic and in addition to the money raised by the ride itself, she’s raising money for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. She’s pledging to do the 105-mile ride. Yes, you read that right, 105 miles! I’ll also be doing the ride, but I’m aiming to just be able to make the 28 mile ride.
Amanda’s goal is to raise $2000 and is already 62% of the way there as of today. So, if you are interested, please consider sending some money her way in honor of Tudor fandom.
Here’s the link to her Team in Training page, where you can donate.
At this point some old-time site visitors are recovering from a fainting spell. Yes, it’s true, I’m really working on the actual site, not just updating the blogs and podcast!
Whenever I starting working on the site proper after a long spell, I always think of when Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory started up again after he closed down because the workers were stealing his secrets. Well, I don’t have yummy chocolate and candy to share (or any creepy Oompa Loompas to help me out), but I will be updating some entries, adding some new pictures (including quite a few from my 2003 trip to the UK that I finally scanned from the negatives) and various other things. I need to re-organize and cross-link some things too, but that might take some more tweaking. I’m also going to start doing individual “updates” pages for each person, etc., so you can keep track of what I have added, updated or corrected. There will be a link at the bottom of each individual page to its “updates” page. I sort of borrowed the idea from Wikipedia, although I won’t be keeping copies of the old versions of the pages (some of them that I wrote over 10 years ago are almost painful to read since I think my historical writing has improved since I originally started the site!). I’ll try to do a blog post summarizing recent updates periodically for folks who are interested.
PS: And for those of you whose calendar already reads April 1, no, this isn’t an April Fool’s Day joke. I really am working on the site!
Featured website: English Heritage http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/
Images of England: http://www.imagesofengland.org.uk/
PastScape: http://www.pastscape.org/
Wikimedia link for fan vaults: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Fan_vaults
Oriel window images:
Shakespeare’s Birthplace
Sudeley Castle
Hampton Court Palace
Portcullis images:
Bodiam Castle
Westminster Abbey exterior (can you find all five portcullises?)
Music from Magnatune.com
La Primavera, The Dufay Collective (album “Cancionero”) and Jacob Heringman (album “Jane Pickeringes Lute Book” and “Blame Not My Lute”)
Intro – “Greensleeves” by La Primavera on “English Renaissance Music”
After news – “Larouse” by Jacob Heringman on “Blame Not My Lute”
After “This Month” – “Galliard” by Jacob Heringman on “Jane Pickeringes Lute Book”
After glossary – “Baloo” by Jacob Heringman on “Blame Not My Lute”
After text – “Dindiridin” (excerpt) by Dufay Collective (album “Cancionero”)
After closing – “Differencias sobr’el canto” by Dufay Collective (album “Cancionero”)
[Comments are closed on older posts. If you wish to make a comment, please contact Lara via the link in the sidebar.]
I wasn’t planning on posting this originally, since it sort of covers territory of other articles I’ve recently posted, but since several people have mailed me the link, I guess I had better post it! 🙂
From The New York Times:
Among the many things for which he will be remembered, Paul Scofield, who died on Wednesday at 86, helped to usher in a whole era of classy, lushly produced costume films set in the Tudor period. He made the 16th century seem glamorous.
…
There have been lots of articles, but I thought this one was interesting because the writer addresses some issues that we discussed about the first season. I’ll pull a few quotes below:
The king’s physical appearance may be a minor point, really, when you consider the historical facts that “The Tudors” have played fast and loose with. And Michael Hirst, the show’s creator and writer, will defend every single decision.
“Showtime commissioned me to write an entertainment, a soap opera, and not history,” said Hirst, taking a break in an office at Ardmore Studios, near Dublin. “And we wanted people to watch it.”
It seems there have been practical moviemaking reasons for the misrepresentations. Take Henry’s sisters. In Season 1, Gabrielle Anwar played one, Princess Margaret, who marries an older man, the king of Spain, against her will. As any number of Internet history buffs will tell you, it was Henry’s other sister, Mary, who did that, and the older man was the king of France. So didn’t the writer do his research?
As it turns out, Hirst was well aware of both facts. But the list of characters already included a Princess Mary, Catherine of Aragon’s little daughter. “I didn’t want two Princess Marys on the call sheet,” he said, because it might have confused the crew. ” `Which one do you mean, Michael? Who do we dress?’ ”
As for Margaret/Mary’s husband, “The Tudors” had shown a French king in a different context in Season 1. Hirst feared that viewers might be confused, so he just chose another European country.
Thomas Cranmer was burned at the stake on this day in 1556. Head on over to Executed Today read all about it!
From The Telegraph:
Scofield, one of the finest classical actors of his generation, won his Academy award as well as a Bafta, in 1967 for his role as Sir Thomas More, the 16th century Lord Chancellor executed by Henry VIII, in the film of Robert Bolt
The first episode of the second season is now available through the Showtime website and through the podcast for the show (which you can find through the iTunes podcast directory). I just downloaded it myself to watch later at home. The file size for the podcast is over 600MB, so be careful if you have bandwidth caps (like I do at home… pesky satellite internet!).
(Tip o’ the French hood to Holly!)
I just wanted to put something out there that spammers and scammers are once again trying to spoof my domain or use the site address in emails to try to scam folks. The only two email addresses that I use are tudorhistory@tudorhistory.org and lara@tudorhistory.org. Anything else that appears to be coming from my domain has been faked. Generally the only email you will get from me is in response to an email you sent to begin with or to a question submitted through the Q&A form.
Also, I’ve seen at least one email of a Nigerian-type scam saying that they saw a person’s profile on tudorhistory.org. The only “profiles” that are on my site are from people who have commented on the blogs or have submitted listings on the penpal pages, so if you’ve done either of those, you might want to be on the lookout for that type of scammer email.
I don’t even TRY to make an attempt to keep up with all the book and movie reviews on Tudor topics since there are way too many, but here’s an exception. Open Letters Monthly, an arts and literature review site, is doing “A Year With the Tudors” with Steve Donoghue, and you can see the first three installments here:
January – Henry VIII: Court, Church, and Conflict By David Loades
February – Edward VI: The Lost King of England by Chris Skidmore
March – Henry VIII
Although I don’t intend to get into the habit of a bunch of funny You Tube videos here, I couldn’t resist to this one. Thanks to Stephen on the TudorTalk list for bringing it to our attention. BTW, it’s a parody of the “Leave Britney Alone” video, but you don’t necessarily have to have seen that to enjoy this one.
Here’s a link to the article from the New York Post on the current popularity of the Tudors that I was interviewed for and a few of you responded to the call for NY Tudor fans. It’s short, but kind of funny, since it sounds like a lot of us gave some of the same answers to why we think the Tudors remain popular today.
