In late medieval Ireland, they had customary words of abuse for one another. Englishobbe. Irishdogg. So deep was the antipathy that one parliament was forced to legislate against such language, on pain of a year in prison and an unspecified fine. But this wasn’t the indigenous Irish and their Anglo-Norman colonisers abusing one another. It... Continue Reading →
Camillo Agrippa and the Renaissance art of fencing
When change came, it was swift. Until the turn of the 1570s, Edmund Howes writes in his continuation of John Stow’s Annales, “the auncient English fight of sword and buckler was onely had in use”. Bucklers – small shields – were to be bought in any haberdasher. But “shortly after… began long rapiers, and he... Continue Reading →
Charles Dickens and the origins of A Christmas Carol
“Marley was dead: to begin with.” It’s as good a first line for a ghost story as you could imagine. But where did A Christmas Carol begin for its author, Charles Dickens? The answer seems to be the second report of the Children’s Employment Commission, published at the end of February 1843. On 6 March,... Continue Reading →
Edgar the Ætheling: the might-have-been king
It is strange to think that after Harold was killed at Hastings the crown of England might have gone not to a man of Viking descent born in Normandy but an Anglo-Saxon born in Hungary. Edgar the Ætheling was the son of Edward, nephew of Edward the Confessor, who had fled - or been driven... Continue Reading →
Blood on the altar: the Viking raid on Lindisfarne
The northern diaspora we call the age of the Vikings is testament to the mobility of early medieval Europe. So too is the fact that the most contemporary account we have of the viking raid on Lindisfarne of 8 June 793 comes from the court of Charlemagne in faraway Aachen. Alcuin, a Northumbrian monk and... Continue Reading →
Dissected maps and the invention of the jigsaw
Thanks to lockdown, sales of jigsaw puzzles grew nearly 40% in 2020, reaching £100 million for the first time. It’s a far cry from the puzzle’s humble origin in a printmakers shop just off Drury Lane. The concept of children’s publishing was slowly emerging in the 18th century, with much of its focus on education... Continue Reading →
The first Svengali
Whenever Dominic Cummings makes the headlines, commentators reach for the same word to describe his relationship with the prime minister: he is Boris Johnson’s Svengali, they write. But who was the original Svengali? Svengali is one of those rare literary creations so seemingly archetypal his name becomes short-hand for a kind of behaviour: in this... Continue Reading →
Hans Holbein: The Artist in a Changing World by Jeanne Nuechterlein
In Augsburg’s Staatsgalerie Altdeutsche Meister there is a three-paneled painting illustrating the life of St Paul, painted by local artist Hans Holbein the Elder in 1504. Commissioned for the city’s Dominican convent of St Katherine, it includes, in its left panel, a self-portrait of the artist with his two sons, Hans and Ambrosius – nicknamed,... Continue Reading →
From Africa to Canterbury: the first remaking of the English church
Five of the first six archbishops of Canterbury to be consecrated were not native to this country. None came from as far afield as the seventh: Theodore, born in 602, was a Greek-speaking monk from Tarsus – the modern Turkish city of Gözlü Kule – in what was then a Byzantine province. Educated in Antioch... Continue Reading →
The Matter of Song in Early Modern England by Katherine R Larson
A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to hear legendary English folk singer Shirley Collins perform. One of the songs she sang was ‘Awake, Awake’, written by Thomas Deloney in 1580 but seemingly forgotten until Ralph Vaughan Williams heard it sung by an elderly Herefordshire woman in July 1909. Long dead on the... Continue Reading →
Nicholas Hilliard: Life of an Artist by Elizabeth Goldring
It is July 1571, and Elizabeth I is sitting for a portrait in “the open ally of a goodly garden”, almost certainly at Hampton Court. The portrait is “in little” – what we would now call a watercolour miniature, although the latter term didn’t enter the English language until Sir Philip Sidney introduced it from... Continue Reading →
The 1603 trial of Walter Ralegh
It is a curious fact that when Sir Walter Ralegh was finally executed – on 29 October 1618 – he had been legally dead for 15 years. Even by 17th-century standards, that was unusual. But then, not many people face the death penalty twice in court – particularly when found guilty the first time, as... Continue Reading →
Ralegh: The Treason Trial
Before its run in the Sam Wanamaker Theatre beginning 24 November, Oliver Chris’ staging of Sir Walter Ralegh’s treason trial had several performances in the Great Hall in Winchester, where the trial itself was held on 17 November 1603. Ralegh had been Elizabeth I’s favourite. But he had no standing with James I, and when... Continue Reading →
Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War at the British Library
MGM, at its zenith in the 1940s, used to boast that it had more stars than there are in heaven on its roster. It’s a phrase that came back to me walking round the current, jaw-droppingly good exhibition at the British Library, Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War. By the time I was half way through... Continue Reading →
White King: Charles I – Traitor, Murderer, Martyr by Leanda de Lisle
White King by Leanda de Lisle On New Year’s Day 1640, Charles I was in the Banqueting House participating in what would be the last court masque of his reign. Charles himself performed as King Philogenes, the lover of his people, who rescues his kingdom from a Fury named Discord. “All that are harsh, all... Continue Reading →
Mary, Countess of Pembroke: poetry, patronage and power
This is, more or less, the text of the talk I gave earlier this month at the Wilton History Festival. Mary, Countess of Pembroke, and her sons William and Philip, were the most influential patrons of the Elizabethan and Jacobean era. Let’s begin with a story to illustrate that assertion. For the moment, we will... Continue Reading →
Emigrants: Why the English Sailed to the New World by James Evans
Otto von Bismarck was once asked to identify the pre-eminent fact in modern world history. That America spoke English, he replied. In Emigrants, James Evans attempts to explain how and why that happened. For much of the 17th century, England was something of a failed state. In mid-century it collapsed into a brutal and protracted... Continue Reading →
So High A Blood: The Life of Margaret, Countess of Lennox by Morgan Ring
So High A Blood explores in detail the life of Margaret, Countess of Lennox, a Tudor princess without whom, perhaps, there would have been no Stewart succession and no subsequent union between England and Scotland. Born in 1515, Margaret was the daughter of Margaret Tudor, the eldest daughter of Henry VII, by her second husband... Continue Reading →
Heart of darkness: from the time-honoured barbarity of the Tudors in Ireland to Islamic State
The leader of a small military force – perhaps 500 strong – is determined to subdue a province, and to do so quickly. Terror is his explicit policy. Every inroad he makes into enemy territory is followed by indiscriminate slaughter and destruction. Every man, woman and child is killed. Houses, churches, crops – everything is... Continue Reading →
Human remains: some thoughts on the funeral of Richard III
Over the course of this morning, thousands of people will gather in Leicester for the re-interment of the bones of Richard III. Many more – hundreds of thousands certainly – will watch proceedings on TV as Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the actor Benedict Cumberpatch speak at the ceremony. What does it mean,... Continue Reading →
Mathew Lyons 