Owlpen Manor rivals Minster Lovell when it comes to walling-up and starving….

Having recently written about Minster Lovell and the fact that the remains of Francis Lovell may have been found walled up there, I found myself drawn to yet another Cotswold house with a similar legend. This is Owlpen Manor on the western flank of the Cotswolds. This Owlpen Manor link mentions four ghosts, but only…

Children? Or a litter of 14th-century what….?

  “….John and his elder brother, Richard, and younger brother, Edward, and their sister, Constance, were bred as children at Dartington….” Um, what else might they have been bred as? 🤪 I won’t identify the source – not fair, because people like me aren’t supposed to see it as funny!  

PYKE NOTTE THY NOSTRELLYS!

If you watch a lot of a Hollywood ‘medieval’ movies, you would be forgiven in thinking that all medieval people, from the youngest to the oldest, ate like pigs at the trough, threw gnawed animal  bones on the floor, belched and yelled loudly at the dinner table, and merrily ate their dinners with filthy nails…

A STRANGE PORTRAIT OF ELIZABETH WOODVILLE

Recently I came across a Victorian piece of art by Ford Madox Brown which is supposed to depict Elizabeth Woodville first appearing before Edward IV with her two small children. It’s rather odd piece and not particularly flattering–I am guessing that the artist was not a Woodville fan? Here, a rather plain-looking Liz W. has …

NOT AGAIN! THE LATEST FROM A CAIRO DWELLER …

Richard Duke of Gloucester being offered the crown by the Three Estates at Baynards Castle, June 1483.  Painting by Sigismund Goetze at the Royal Exchange…(or according to some.. Richard in the actual act of ‘usurping’ the throne)… I came across this article on a forum devoted to late medieval Britain. Unfortunately I read it..5 minutes from my…

Cecily Neville

As we mentioned here, Ashdown-Hill’s biography of Richard’s mother was published in April. Whilst his latest, to which we shall return later, was released today, we shall concentrate on Cecily here. This is the book that summarises Cecily’s life by delineating her full and half-siblings, demonstrating that portraits (right) previously assumed to be of her and…

A portrait of Richard in Lego….!

It was a great idea for the Easter Holiday, to let visitors to the Richard III Centre in Leicester help to create a portrait of Richard. Somehow it doesn’t seem possible that it eventually contained nearly 97,000 bricks, or that it might be destroyed. It deserves to be kept at the centre!  

An Easter exhibition

From Saturday to Easter Monday, the Richard III Visitor Centre will have a special interactive exhibition for children, including the chance to build the King from Lego bricks or to illustrate him in other ways.  

Another clue to the mystery of the “Princes”?

On the left is Gipping Chapel in Suffolk, attached to the Tyrrell property of Gipping Hall. It is a tradition within the Tyrrell family that the “Princes”, the sons of Edward IV who were technically children, lived there during 1483-4 “with the permission of the mother” . To the right is St. Nicholas of Myra,…

Richard III and Lorenzo de’ Medici

I have just completed my new novel, Richard Liveth Yet (Book II): A Foreign Country, an alternative history story in which Richard, having won at Bosworth, continues as King of England and pays a visit to Florence at the invitation of Lorenzo de’ Medici. On researching Lorenzo, I became intrigued by the number of parallels…