What were our medieval kings’ voices like….?

Today I once again heard Henry VIII described as Bluff King Hal. Well, this is usually said almost affectionately, which the Henry VIII we all know does not warrant. He was a monster. I think his voice was probably stentorian. Eventually he was downright nasty and needed to be approached with an excessively long bargepole.…

Is it ‘Forty’? Or ‘Fourty’?

The following article is from the excellent Merriam Webster online dictionary, and although I tried to post just the link, I couldn’t get it to work. So I’m posting the article in full, and state here and now that none of it is my work. It’s all Merriam Webster, very interesting and deals with the…

Matthew Lewis on YouTube: 2) Mancini

Here is the second in my series of Top 10’s. This one is focussing on Dominic Mancini’s account of the events of 1483. It’s a hugely problematical source, both in terms of Mancini himself, who spoke no English, had no grasp of English politics and very limited sources, and in terms of the current translation…

So if …

… Edward IV is either Mr. Rochester or Captain Mainwaring, which other fictional character may be based on one of his contemporaries? John, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, posthumously Edward’s father-in-law, who was identified after the battle of Castillon by the gap between his teeth might be Terry-Thomas? Domenico Mancini, a foreign visitor who barely understood…

Shakespeare said it first….!

I am always intrigued to know the origin of words, phrases, proverbs and so on, if only so that I don’t use them anachronistically in my books. It’s not always possible, of course, because some things are just too engrained in the English language, and sticking to the correct English for, say, the 15th century,…

Whither Goest Thou?

Having just written my first novel, in which Richard III visits the 21st century, I needed to let the reader see a contrast between him and modern people, partly in the way he spoke. I quickly found that this wasn’t as easy as I’d thought, so my Richard has a great facility for languages and…