The Tudor Fair Blog
Listening Projects (or infusing more Beethoven into my life)
I spend a lot of time bemoaning the amount of music there is in the world which I will never hear. There just isn’t enough time in the day. Same with books. If I read all 1500 books on my Kindle this year, during the time I spent reading another…
Self Publishing Chronicles: The cheap & easy way to turn your book into an Audiobook
A few months ago I self published my first novel, and my 3rd book this year. With each one I did some things differently, tried publishing on different platforms, tried different marketing tricks out to see what works and what … well, didn’t so much. One of the things I…
Episode 051: Rebellions One
An introduction to the rebellions that our Tudor monarchs faced. There were five or six general causes that led to rebellion – these were: – Dynastic – either replacing the Tudors all together (something Henry VII faced) or changing the succession (Mary and Elizabeth both faced these). – Economic –…
Richard III: Knave, Fool or Savior?
The great debate continues – no, not Clinton v Trump, or even Creamy v Crunchy (peanut butter, that is), but Richard III: Knave, Fool, or Savior? The History of England podcast, which I adore, is getting close to wrapping up the Wars of the Roses, the civil war that tore England apart…
Book Love: The Versions Of Us
I recently stayed up Really Late several nights in a row to finish The Versions of Us by Laura Barnett. Let me just say, it was worth the extra cups of coffee I needed in the mornings to function properly. I absolutely loved this book. The Versions of Us tells…
One hit wonder: Robert Hunt’s Stabat Mater and the Peterhouse Partbooks
While listening to my beloved Millennium of Music radio program recently, I discovered the Peterhouse Partbooks. Yes, I say discovered, because I had never heard of this treasure trove of choral music before. And for that I feel a teeny bit embarrassed, though grateful that I’ve found them when I…
Episode 50! Tudor Times on Honor Grenville
Honor Grenville was born in relative obscurity in Cornwall, and wound up marrying Henry VIII’s uncle (Arthur Plantagenet, one of the illegitimate sons of Edward IV). She moved to Calais with him, and had this dream of a life for several years until he was implicated in a plot involved…
Christina de Pizan: Early Feminist, Poet, and all around Badass
Have you ever noticed that once you hear about someone for the first time, they often come back to haunt you? Christina de Pizan is like that for me. I had never really registered her before I interviewed Alison Weir this past February when she came up. Nowadays everywhere I look…
What I Learned about Myself Spending 5 Hours in Morocco
(note, I first published this on my personal blog, over here, in which I am writing about my life in Spain, and all the whimsical things I’m into. History is only one of the many things about which I am passionate, and I don’t want to clog up this blog…
Music from the world of the Queen of Scots
We all know that early music, particularly English liturgical music, is my big passion, right? I geek out on the music created out of the Book of Common Prayer, and I can easily sit for hours comparing Tallis through the decades. But one area I don’t know that much about,…
The Book that Won’t Leave my Heart Alone
Now that I’m back in Spain and not solo parenting like I had been there for a while, I’ve been doing a lot more reading. My goal is always to read about 5 books a month, but I haven’t had a month this year where I’ve achieved that. Last week…
The Most Surprising Things I Learned about Catherine of Aragon this month
I’ve been podcasting with Tudor Times again, this month about Catherine of Aragon. I have read countless books about Henry’s six wives, and Catherine always takes up a huge proportion of each book simply because of the large role she played in Henry’s life. She was married to him the…