Starkey on home territory

This BBC documentary was actually very good and it worked because Starkey spoke about a subject he knows inside out – the Reformation and Henry VIII, relating it to current affairs. From Luther’s theses, indulgences and translating the Bible, first into German then English, he moved onto Tyndale‘s efforts to smuggle it into England and…

The Windsor centenary

Today in 1917, the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was renamed the House of Windsor, at the behest of George V and his advisors. There has been a series on Channel Five about it, focussed on the Castle and Great Park, whilst rather too gossiply and less historical than it could have been, was highly informative, with…

Rei(g)ned in?

I don’t know how to tell you this but Dan Jones has made further appearances on our television screens this spring. Thankfully, both C5 three-part series have featured him as a sidekick to Suzannah Lipscomb, so his prejudices against various monarchs have had little exercise. The first of these was about Elizabeth I, featured Lily Cole…

Views over the site of Stoke Field….

Oh, the penalty of working my way through the documentaries available on BBC iPlayer! I keep finding little nuggets of Ricardian interest. Tonight I chose “Crossing England in a Punt: River of Dreams”, the title of which is rather self-explanatory. Explorer Tom Fort punts his way from the birth of the River Trent in Staffordshire to…

Lucy does the Glorious Revolution

Did anyone watch the second episode of Lucy Worsley’s fib-busting series last night? I didn’t quite make it to the end because I was so tired, but saw enough to understand that she did to James VII/II exactly what she did with Richard III. By that I mean she concentrated on the deeds/misdeeds of the…

How to build a medieval castle….

If you have not seen the BBC documentary series “Secrets of the Castle”, please give it a whirl. It is about a 20-year project in Burgundy to build/rebuild a medieval castle, using all the materials and skills that would have been available to the original castle-builders. It is being repeated on the Yesterday channel at…

George III revealed

This documentary, presented by Robert Hardman of the Daily Mail, unveils some of our longest-serving King’s secrets, such as a draft abdication letter after American independence was achieved. It also discusses his health issues in greater detail. Until recently, it was thought that he suffered from porphyria, a physical disease that Mary Stuart carried to…

If you have watched …

… Channel Five’s http://www.channel5.com/show/secrets-of-great-british-castles, let me reassure you of something. There really was a king named Richard III and Dan Jones has simply forgotten to mention him. Episode 2 was about Cardiff Castle, where Richard and Anne have a window devoted to them (seasons-greetings-2016-a-2). Episode 3 was about the structure at York, or Clifford’s Tower…

Victoria and Flora

http://www.itv.com/hub/victoria/2a4229a0001 It is more interesting to watch a drama about a much later monarch when one is better informed than before. Lady Flora Rawdon-Hastings, the lady in waiting who appeared to be pregnant but was suffering from a cancer that proved terminal after a few months, was the sister of the 2nd Marquess of Hastings…

Julian of Norwich

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07l6bd0 I would highly recommend this documentary by Janina Ramirez, whose book on the subject will soon be available . She showed how Julian, who was female by the way, was born during the fourteenth century. She may well have had a husband and children but lost both to the Black Death before becoming an…