The bells ring for Cardinal Wolsey

On Friday, I was in St. Lawrence’s Church, now a cafe, in the town centre when the meeting I was at was punctuated by the ringing of bells just above the front door. We assumed at the time that this was practice for the for the forthcoming coronation. However, as this article shows, it was…

We sailed against the Spanish Armada flying the Union Jack….

  Oh, puLEEEZE! Not English ships flying the Union Jack when fighting the Spanish Armada! The offending source of this blooper? One of the Drain the Ocean series of TV documentaries (Series 2, episode 7, entitled Secrets of the Spanish Armada) . The picture above is from the episode, but I couldn’t find one of…

Steve Coogan’s film about the finding of Richard is to go ahead….!

  There are numerous articles online now to confirm that Steve Coogan’s movie about Philippa Langley and the finding of Richard III is to go ahead. Filming will start next year. Here’s just one article.

The jeweller who made Richard’s funeral crown….

This article is about George Easton, the jeweller who created Richard III’s crown (see above) for the funeral and reinterment at Leicester. And he did so with the assistance of John Ashdown-Hill, although John’s name isn’t mentioned. George’s business is called Danegeld: “….A land tax in Anglo-Saxon England might not sound the most glamorous starting…

She isn’t “going through the card” after all

As you probably know, the list of women who have been beheaded in England is very short. Helena Bonham Carter has played two of them so far – Lady Jane (1554) in 1986 and Anne Boleyn (1536) (opposite Ray Winstone’s Henry VIII on ITV) in 2003 and I heard that she was about to play a royal…

Elijah’s Frodo or Aneurin’s Richard III….?

I have recently watched the Fellowship of the Ring series. I confess to watching these films, and The Hobbit, over and over. Yet again, when Elijah’s Wood’s Frodo Baggins was on the screen, I was curiously reminded of Aneurin Barnard’s Richard III. OK, not when Frodo’s eyebrows were on some kind of weird warpath, like…

Richard III and Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar aka ‘El Cid’

To continue my series of posts about Richard’s notable genealogical connections, my latest discovery is that he was directly descended from Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar – El Cid! This time the connection is through his mother’s line and you can see the tree below (in two parts) with red dots showing the direct line of…

Ten great films set in the Middle Ages….

Well, I confess I only know a few of these, and am disappointed that one of my personal favourites, Kingdom of Heaven, doesn’t make this list.  

Did the producers recognise him?

Here is a picture you may well have seen.   It shows, from Carry On Henry, Kenneth Williams as Thomas Cromwell, Lord Privy Seal to Henry VIII and briefly Earl of Essex. In fact, Cromwell’s sister married one Thomas (or Morgan) Williams, although their descendants took the Cromwell surname.

Invasions

  I have watched Dr. Sam Willis on several occasions and regularly enjoy his programmes, particularly his artillery series. With the prematurely grey beard, he is usually much more informative than Dan Jones, who is of a similar age.   However, part two of his Invasions fell below this standard. It featured a lot of black and…