On 8 September 1761 King George III married Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, whom he had first met less than six hours before the wedding, in the Chapel Royal of St James’s Palace. Remarkably, the two feel deeply in love and both remained faithful throughout their 57 years of marriage. George had been come king on… Read more The Marriage of King George III and Queen Charlotte
Queen Elizabeth I was born on 7 September 1533 in Greenwich Palace, the first and only living child of Henry VIII of England and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Her mother would be murdered and Elizabeth herself declared illegitimate just 2.5 years later, in May 1536, but she would survive the reigns of her father,… Read more The Birth of Gloriana
Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, the future Marquis de La Fayette and hero of the American Revolutionary War, the French Revolution of 1789 and the July Revolution of 1830, was born on 6 September 1757 in south central France. Lafayette’s family were among the most illustrious soldiers in French history, and he was… Read more America’s Lafayette
The word chuffed is, in my opinion, one of the most British verbs in existence. It comes from a Tudor term meaning “swollen with fat”, but in today’s parlance it means absolutely swollen with delight. Filled with squee. Full of happiness that something really pleasing happened, often in a very flattering context. Frequently one is… Read more Well, I’m Chuffed
The public funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales took place 20 years ago today, on 6 September 1997. I, along with an estimated two billion other people, watched it on television. I cried. I cried because such a caring mother had been taken away from her little boys who loved her so much. I cried… Read more Thinking of Lady Diana
King Henry VIII of England became engaged to Anna of Cleves on September 4, 1539. The union was a failure, but Anna was lucky, inasmuch as the king annulled their marriage without demanding her head for it. The man who had arranged the match, however, was not so fortunate. The man who ran Henry’s government for him, Thomas Cromwell,… Read more Cleves, Cromwell, and Crazysause
Yesterday we loaded the three girls into the car and headed out to the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, on the southern end of St Brides Bay, walking all the way out on the Marloes Peninsula to its tip, Wooltack Point, where you can see Skomer Island. Dear Lord, is the coast of Pembrokeshire picturesque. We… Read more Seal Pups and Meerkat Babies!
Science has proven that nice guys do NOT finish last, but this wasn’t the case for Medieval kings. For monarchs in the Middle Ages it was survival of the fittest — and the fittest were those who were capable of ruthless, blood-curdling violence. It is that hard-core capacity for annihilating the perceived enemy that makes… Read more The Life and Death of Henry V
In October of 2004, National Geographic published an article by Joel K. Bourne, Jr. entitled Gone With The Water that warned what would happen should a hurricane hit New Orleans. The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the… Read more A Perfect Storm: The Submerged Cities at the Nexus of Climate Change, Political Ideology, and Coastal Development
William Wilberforce, the spearhead and focal point of the English abolitionists, as well as one of my favorite historical personages, was born in Hull, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, on 24 August 1759. He was the only son of Robert Wilberforce, whose family had become wealthy thanks to maritime trade with Baltic countries,… Read more William Wilberforce, a Truly Great Man