Richard II’s visit to Edward II’s tomb, 1390.

Edward II‘s “tomb” is, as is well-known, to be found in Gloucester Cathedral. What is less well-known is that Richard II wanted it become a shrine, and for his great-grandfather to become St. Edward of Caernarfon. Interestingly, we cannot even be entirely sure that Edward II’s remains lie in the tomb. Kathryn Warner has produced…

Long live the King

This interesting tome has finally appeared in paperback. The opening Parts read like an abridged biography of the story familiar to us through Warner’s The Unconventional King, but to be read with an open mind as to whether Edward II survived his “official death” today in 1327 or not. The reader will re-learn the events…

Medieval (sic) Murder Mysteries

This is a six-part series, first shown on “Yesterday” (a UKTV channel) in 2015 but is available to view on their website here. The producers used pathologists, coroners, historians, barristers and other writers to form their conclusions, some of which are more reliable than others. The first episode, which surely misses the mediaeval timescale, is…

Mer de Mort reviewed

Anything new from the Legendary Ten Seconds is always to be greeted with delight, and this new album does not disappoint. It tells the story of the House of Mortimer from its beginnings in France, to its ultimate destiny on the throne of England, through its descendants of the House of York, Edward IV and…

Twelve buildings in use today that were around in King Richard’s days..

    HORTON COURT, GLOUCESTERSHIRE A link to an interesting article: Unfortunately I have  been unable to discover any link to King Richard  or his contemporaries having visited any of the properties other than the tenuous connection of  Horton Court passing  to a descendant of John Paston of the “Paston Letters” family. Thanks to Tom Martinscroft…

A spook at Berkeley? Or a trick of the light….?

With drones in the news a lot of late, concerning their interference at airports, perhaps we should remember that they do have some very useful attributes. Especially such things as flying around ancient monuments and giving splendidly detailed views. There have long been photographs, recordings and so on that claim to be evidence of supernatural…

Dyer or Dire?

Many of you will remember the episode of “Who do you think you are” in which Danny Dyer was revealed as a descendant of Edward III. In this new two part series, he “meets” a few prominent ancestors, some even more distant. The first episode began with Rollo, ancestor of the Dukes of Normandy, which…

Sleep in Henry VIII’s bedroom? But not his bed….!

The picturesque little Gloucestershire town of Thornbury is not in the Cotswolds, but down in the Vale of the River Severn, between Bristol and Gloucester. Caught between the Cotswold escarpment and the Severn estuary, it is an area of rich farmland, with orchards for cider and perry, and pasture for the production of cheese. Everyone…

Playwrights and persistent historical myths

Today in 1564, Christopher Marlowe (right) was baptised in Canterbury. One of the plays for which he is most famous is       Edward II (left), traditionally dated a year before his own 1593 death. In it, he fuels the myth of Edward meeting his end by a red-hot poker. This is cited by Starkey in…

William “Waste-all” Berkeley, the lord who out-Stanleyed the Stanleys at Bosworth….!

Here is the story of yet another lord who betrayed Richard III at Bosworth. Oh, but wait a moment, this one betrayed Henry Tudor as well, now there’s a feat! The man in question was William, eventually Marquess of Berkeley, but nicknamed “Waste-all”. He was 43 when he won the Battle of Nibley Green, which…