The Tudor Fair Blog
Why a nun who lived a thousand years ago is still important today
One of the things I love about history is how the past keeps coming back to us. Hildegard of Bingen was a medieval German abbess who lived about 900 years ago. She was given to the church as a young girl, and rose to become a woman who ran a convent…
Cordoba: The 11th Century’s Most Cosmopolitan City
If you were looking for the hippest place to be in 11th century Europe, you wouldn’t go to Paris. Or London, which was an outpost badgered by centuries of Viking invasions, and was about to be conquered by the Normans. You wouldn’t go to Berlin, or Florence, or even Rome.…
Episode 41: Benjamin Redding
So this week I talked about Benjamin Redding about Boats! Benjamin Redding is a final year PhD candidate in history at The University of Warwick. His research project – under the provisional title ‘Divided by La Manche: Naval Enterprise and Maritime Revolution in England and France, 1545-1642’ – is kindly funded by…
The Self Publishing Journey: Learning about Preorders
For the past 8-ish months I’ve been on a Writing and Publishing Journey where I’ve been taking all the things I’ve seen in my time in LibraryLand, am mixing it with courses I’ve been doing on my own (like Tribe Writers from Jeff Goins) and am coming up with the…
Early Music Saturday: Madrigals of Madness from the Calmus Ensemble
I have said it before, and I’ll say it again – I find the best music via the Millennium of Music show, which is on both Sirius and NPR. I have a membership and can listen to old episodes (it’s the best $2.99/month I spend) and I was perusing episodes…
How Scotland arrived in Westminster
This week I’ve been re-reading Alison Weir’s The Lost Tudor Princess, Alison Weir’s book about Margaret Douglas, Henry VIII’s niece via his sister Margaret, who married the King of Scotland. When her husband died, she married again for love, and had Margaret, who, because she was born on English soil became a…
Teba: A Spanish Castle with a Scottish History
A crumbling castle in rural Andalusia with a Scottish history? And you can go wander around for free, and it only costs like €2 to get in to the building itself? Say what? Yep, that’s the Castle of the Stars at Teba. Teba itself is a pueblo blanco (white village –…
Everything New is Old Again: The ORA Choir launch
In about a week and a half I’m going back to London to attend (and write about) the launch of the ORA Singers, a new choir that is based on commissioning contemporary composers write reimagined reflections of Tudor masterworks. Full disclosure – I know Suzi Digby, the founder. About 5 years…
In which I connect the Spanish Armada and Hannah’s Move to a Big Girl Bed
I just spent the morning recording and pushing out a new podcast episode on the summer of 1588 when England successfully defended her borders from the Spanish Armada, intent on invading and overthrowing Protestant Elizabeth. At the same time, my babygirl is transitioning from her crib into a big girl…
Armada II: The Battle
Resources: Videos: Armada – 12 Days to Save England available from the BBC Shop in the UK Websites http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/tudors/adams_armada_01.shtml#five http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/uk/armada/back/backd.html http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/spanish-armada/ http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/spanish-armada-defeated Books The Spanish Armada The Confident Hope of a Miracle: The True History of the Spanish Armada by Neil Hanson Imprudent King, a New Life of Phillip II by…
The Mystical Magical Lindisfarne
I had this idea that January would be a good time to journey to the wilds of Northumberland to commune with my internal monks and vikings in the magical Holy Island, Lindisfarne. And I was right. Lindisfarne is a small island off the coast of Northumberland near Berwick upon Tweed,…
Historical Fiction Book Review: The Arrow of Sherwood by Lauren Johnson
Lauren Johnson is a medieval historian and consultant for Past Pleasures (the UK’s oldest costumed interpretation company) and a storyteller who has appeared on radio and TV. For all those reasons, I was excited to read her origin story about Robin Hood, and had high expectations for the history. In…