More on More

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive”(Marmion, Sir Walter Scott) We all know that there was some deception in Thomas More‘s “History“, but how much? In Cairo, they think that the whole first half of his narrative is the gospel truth but the second half is an invention –…

The O’Donnells, the Four Masters and the Personnel of the Wars of the Roses

In the context of the current search for the remains of the Red Hugh O’Donnell who died in Spain in 1602, I thought that readers Murrey and Blue might be interested in a few vaguely Wars-of-the-Roses-related snippets from the O’Donnell history of the fifteenth century. In 1434 Red Hugh’s predecessor Niall Garbh O’Donnell was captured…

The King’s bishop? What did John Russell know in 1483?

  “ ‘Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?’ ‘To the curious incident of the dog in the night time’ ‘The dog did nothing in the night time’ ‘That is the curious incident ‘ remarked Sherlock Holmes.”[1]   By applying his reasoning to this simple observation, the world’s…