The Tudor Fair Blog
Anne Boleyn’s Songbook: sharing the intimate emotions of a Queen
I posted recently about my interview with Dr. David Skinner, an eminent musicologist based out of the College of Sidney Sussex, Cambridge. When I posted before it was about the logistics of my interview (getting caught in the rain, microphone not working, etc etc). But now that his CD is…
Queen or Pope – Catholics in Elizabethan England
Caitlin Moran talks in her book, How to be a Woman, about the idea that often when we discover a particular book, we are suddenly introduced to all its friends, and so join this society that we hadn’t even known existed before. So if you, for example, start reading Dorothy…
Suzi Digby talks 500 years of choral music in 34 minutes.
In 2011 I met Suzi Digby via Twitter. Having found out that she is a choral goddess and was in Los Angeles for a visiting professorship in choral conducting and arts leadership, I immediately asked if I could take her to coffee and meet her. I visited her in Queen’s…
Favorite Places and Spaces: Soho in London
When I lived in London, I worked at 76 Brewer Street, on the end of Soho near Golden Square, on the eastern end, tucked away from the tourists of Piccadilly, Leicester Square, and Oxford Street on all sides, a neighborhood of its own. What used to be a hunting ground…
launching the bigworld tour company, and why I love early choral music
This year I am embarking on a new project as an entrepreneur who leads cultural tours to England, specializing in trips to listen to great choral services in cathedrals. My dear friend Jim and I are building a tour company, our first trip is scheduled for May 2016, and I’ve been working on…
Favorite Places and Spaces – Cirencester
So let me tell you about my trip to the UK last week. It was full of excitement (ie meeting with one of my idols, the early music expert David Skinner, to interview him for my podcast), and peace (long train journeys criss crossing the country, listening to my music…
Random Friday Fun Facts: The Swindon Magic Roundabout
Recently on a train trip from Gatwick to Cirencester, I passed through Swindon. Swindon, in general, isn’t a huge tourist attraction. In fact, Jasper Fford seems to have built a website dedicated to taking the piss out of Swindon as a tourist attraction (pointing out the double helix carpark as a major…
Favorite Places in England: Getting chased by wild dogs in Cornwall
So let me tell you a story about a weekend in Cornwall in 2000. I had just moved to the UK about 4 months before, and one of my dear friends was having a party in Cornwall. He rented out a farmhouse, and was going to have a massive end-of-summer…
The Week in Books: England before William, the hilarious and the boring
This past week I’ve been reading two books, one of which, by the previously-blogged-about-and-Monty-Python-esque Howard of Warwick was a murder mystery set in a monastery near Lincoln, and the other, a fairly scholarly book about King Oswald and Britain around the time of Bede, was mind-numbingly boring, though based on…
Favorite Places in England: Chichester
The church I go to is called St. Richard’s of Chichester, and so on one of my trips to the UK I felt compelled to spend some time getting to know St. Richard, and his town. Fortunately for me, it’s a nice place to visit, and I was also able…
Favorite Places in England: Bournemouth
Let me tell you about a weekend trip I had to Bournemouth a few years ago, which has made it become one of my Favorite Places in England. I was ridiculously behind on work, and I wanted to get out of London and go somewhere quiet where I could catch…
Favorite Places in England: Not Drowning in Scaroborough
When I lived in the UK when I was in my early 20’s post-college figuring-life-out phase (which I never really grew out of), I used to go to random tourist places based on British folk songs, or throwing darts at maps. Or showing up at the train station and picking…