Douce Dame Jolie: Machaut’s ghostly music of love and death

Originally posted on Giaconda's Blog:
? Douce Dame Jolie was composed in the C14th by Guillaume de Machaut who lived between 1300 and 1377 around the area of Rheims in France. It follows the conventions of the ‘Ars Nova’ style which flourished in France and the Low Countries during the C14th and the structure…

An interactive 3D tour of Richard’s place in that car park….

The Ricardian news today is in a great many national newspapers, and concerns a 3D interactive exploration of Richard’s resting place – the car park, not the cathedral. I don’t know how many of you would wish to see this, but I don’t, because it’s too sad to be reminded of what happened to him.…

Shakespeare’s Richard III as depicted in Sir Ian McKellen’s film….

In the following article, Sir Ian McKellen talks specifically about his 1930s version of Shakespeare’s “Richard III”. No mention is made of the real Richard, oh, and the horse for his kingdom has become a jeep! There are  various reasons why I will not be watching this, but tell me, how can it really be Shakespeare’s…

The Battles of the Wars of the Roses

The Wars of the Roses was a prolonged period of civil unrest in England, focussed on a period of just over thirty years which saw seventeen battles between rivals, the initiative swinging swiftly between the sides and the crown changing hands four times as a direct result of battles won and lost. One of the…

TOUR BY MIKE INGRAM: RICHARD DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, LORD OF THE NORTH

Mike Ingram is a battlefield historian and the author of the excellent non-fiction book, Battle Story: Bosworth 1485. Soon Mike will be leading a new tour, Richard Duke of Gloucester, the Lord of the North, alongside Bob Savage from the Royal Armouries. This promises to be a fantastic tour for both Ricardians and members of…

Princess Joanna and her three Kings

http://www.annettecarson.co.uk/357052362

The Forgotten Art of Allegory

Much of Jonathan Swift’s seminal ‘Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts, by Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and then a captain of several ships’, or Gulliver’s Travels as it is more popularly known, is metaphor and allegory. Swift had lived through the troubles of James II’s dalliances with Catholicism, the…

Putting Richard’s name to his bones….

Putting names to bones The above article is very interesting, although the picture that went with it is of Richard’s remains. I know this still upsets many, so I have changed it for one of my own pictures. The text doesn’t only concern Richard, although it does to a great extent. Differing views expressed, of course,…

I sentence you to death by acquittal?

Arthur Waite, Viscount Lisle was released from the Tower of London in March 1542, having been held on suspicion of high treason for two years. This illegitimate son of Edward IV, as were they all, died of a heart attack the same week. Sir Geoffrey Pole was arrested with some cousins, his brother and his…

A book excerpt

With permission, we present  an extract from Kristie Davis Dean’s book “On the trail of the Yorks”, with a particular focus on Margaret of Burgundy and the duchy ruled, during her marriage and widowhood, by her father-in-law, husband, stepdaughter and stepson-in-law. Mechelen is, of course, where a certain historian sought Margaret’s remains, although their identity could…