Yolande of Aragon was born on 11 August 1384 to King John I of Aragon and his second wife, Yolande of Bar. She was not only a king’s daughter, through her mother she was also the granddaughter of King John II of France. As a well-dowered and noble bride, she was a marriage prize from… Read more Yolande of Aragon, Queen of Four Kingdoms and Preserver of France
Happy Birthday to Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first woman (who didn’t keep her gender a secret) to qualify in Britain as a physician and surgeon by having first crossed the English channel and becoming the first female doctor of medicine in France. She was also the first woman in the country to be elected to a… Read more Dr Elizabeth Garrett Anderson
On 4 June 1913 an ardent and militant suffragette by the name of Emily Davison was struck by King George V‘s horse Anmer at the Epsom Derby. The blow fractured her skull, and she died a few days later, having never regained consciousness. Eyewitnesses and historians dispute what she was trying to do on the… Read more Suffragette Suffering for Suffrage
The Battle of Tewkesbury occurred on 4 May 1471 and cemented the reign of King Edward IV by destroying the hopes of the House of Lancaster. Although their king, Henry VI, was still alive, his only son and heir, Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales, who was only a 17 year old boy, was defeated… Read more The Death of Edward of Westminster
Empress Matilda (AKA Maude), widow of Holy Roman Emperor Henry V, wife of Geoffery of Anjou, and heir to King Henry I, became “Lady of the English” on 7 April 1141. However, when she went to be annointed as the new queen in Westminster Abbey, the people of London and her cousin’s wife rallied against… Read more Warring Matilda
I am in a bit of a quandary. Wither do I dither, you may ask? You see, it is International Women’s Day, many women are on strike for A Day Without Women, and there are too many things I want to blog about on this topic. On the one hand, I could blog about Jane… Read more International Women’s Day and Squirrels
The state funeral of Admiral Horatio Nelson was held on 9 January, 1806 and frankly there were Roman Emperors who were mourned with less gravitas and pomp than the Hero of Trafalgar was lamented by the English. The funeral was lavish to say the least. Nelson’s body, inside of a lead coffin that was in… Read more Lady Hamilton’s Lover in Cardinal Wolsey’s Sarcophagus
On New Year’s Day of 1536 Maria de Salinas, Lady Willoughby, breached Kimbolton manor house to be with her dearest fried, Katherina of Aragon, as the former queen lay dying. Maria de Salinas is one of my favorite people of the Tudor era because few people of any time period have ever shown the unswerving… Read more Maria de Salinas, a True Friend
First, lets just get this out of the way. Hillary Clinton won the election. She got more than TWO MILLION more votes than Donald Trump. Clearly, voters rejected neither her not her message. Liberals who were disenchanted with her moderate-right policies and who had backed Bernie Sanders clearly turned out in droves to vote for… Read more The Conundrum of the Battleground States
Netflix has released a new documentary entitled Audrie and Daisy that is an “unflinching account of high-school sexual assault and trial by social media”. This documentary was important to me for several reasons, including because I have written about these young rape victims in my book The Jezebel Effect. In the book I explained that:… Read more Audrie and Daisy and Slut Shaming