First, it should be noted that the title to this blog post should be sung like the chorus of the Pet Shop Boy’s 1984 song “West End Girls” because I am old and my mental playlist is mostly 80s hits. If you are older than 40, you too now have “West End Girls” playing in… Read more Cymru Stones and Wessex Girls
On 16 March 1190 the Jewish community of York committed mass suicide to escape being tortured to death by a mob whipped into anti-Semitic frenzy by pro-Crusade propaganda. The Norman invaders had brought the first Jewish communities into England to fulfill a special economic role as moneylenders. The Jews were even given a special status… Read more An Atrocity at York in 1190
Happy Birthday to Queen Mary I of England! She came into the world on 18 February 1516, and was the only one of Henry VIII’s six children with Katherina of Aragon to survive past early infancy. Mary was a pretty little girl, with her father’s strawberry-blonde hair and ruddy cheeks, and she spent her early… Read more Queen Mary I of England
Sex sells. Ask any modern advertiser and he or she will be the first one to tell you that making something seem sexual – overtly or subtly – is still seen as the best way to get people to pay attention to a product. Humans, caught as we are between apes and angels, are interested… Read more Happy Lupercalia
Deposed queen, Jane Grey Dudley, and her husband Guilford Dudley were executed on 11 February 1554. As I have mentioned before, Eric Ives wrote an excellent book, Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery, which provides ample evidence of Mary’s perfidy and Jane’s lawfulness, which I recommend that you read if you want all the gritty… Read more The Murder of Queen Jane I and Her Consort Guilford Dudley
One of the most used methods of fat shaming and justification for fat hate is tell fat people you are only mocking and/or insulting them for their health. You’re not participating in the sociocultural punishment of fat because you’ve been culturally conditioned to view fat as a physical manifestation of sloth, gluttony, and lack of… Read more How Dare Fat People Be Healthy
Until a language is written down, and the population that speaks it becomes mostly literate, the way words are used and pronounced experience relatively frequent change. Once a language hits print, it still changes – but more slowly and less drastically. Because Iceland became literate a thousand years before most of Northern Europe, people who… Read more Stobbing Cows and the Great Vowel Shift
Harri Tudur, heir to the (7th) Earldom of Richmond, was born to the frighteningly young Margaret Beaufort on 28 January 1457. Through his paternal grandfather, Owain Tudur, the baby was a descendant of of Llywelyn the Great, and through his paternal grandmother, Catherine of Valois, a great-grandson of King Charles VI of France. Those lineages,… Read more Henry VII: Better King Than Kingly
On 24 January 1536 Henry VIII had a jousting accident. Not only was he hit hard, his horse, wearing hundreds of pounds of armor, fell on top of him. The king was unconscious for more than two hours, and it was feared he wouldn’t live. Was this severe concussion the reason Henry began his reign… Read more Humpty Dumpty Had a Great Fall
The least known, but arguably the best writer among the justly lauded Bronte siblings, was the youngest, Anne, who was born on 17 January 1820. Just as Jane Austen was a seminal writer in the Regency era, Anne Bronte – writing under the male pseudonym, Acton Bell – help shaped Victorian literature. More significantly, Anne… Read more Anne Bronte, Feminist and Favorite