Tag: history

Elizabeth I & Her People (2013-14)

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The Darnley Portrait of Elizabeth I

(National Portrait Gallery, London, until 5 January 2014)

The National Portrait Gallery’s autumn exhibition is the most recent in a long line of Tudor and Stuart shows in London over the last eighteen months. It’s much smaller than most of the others: a tasting menu compared to the banquet of the Royal Collection’s In Fine Style or the sprawling buffet of the V&A’s Treasures of the Royal Courts. Its purpose is to look at the social stratification of Elizabethan England and how luxury goods such as portraits, books and fine clothing were becoming increasingly available to the lower classes – merchants, clerics, writers and gentry – as well as to royalty and nobility.

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The King in the North (2005): Max Adams

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★★★★★

The Life and Times of Oswald of Northumbria

Published at the end of August, this book came to my attention as a Kindle recommendation from Amazon. It was a bit of a leap into the dark. I hadn’t come across Max Adams before; I hadn’t heard of the publisher; and I had no idea who Oswald of Northumbria was. No one else on LibraryThing owned the book at the time. But the opening paragraph captivated me and I decided to take the plunge.

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Mary, Queen of Scots: In my End is my Beginning (2013)

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Clouet: Mary Queen of Scots

(National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, 28 June-17 November 2013)

Sea-mist, pinnacles, towering fortifications and nary a level street between them: Edinburgh certainly is a captivating maze of a place. Although my time there was dominated by research – libraries, archives and lots of fabulous old letters – I decided that I had to make time for a bit of sightseeing. The exhibition on everyone’s lips at the moment is the Mary, Queen of Scots show at the National Museum of Scotland. It was just down the road from the library where I’d spent the best part of an extremely wet morning; so I went off for a refreshing dose of the Scottish sixteenth century.

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Performing for the King (2013)

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Performing for the King

(Banqueting House, Whitehall, until 1 September 2013)

In the reign of Charles I, Banqueting House hosted some of the most extravagant entertainments in English history: the court masques. Combining music, song, dance, poetry and cutting-edge special effects, these remarkable plays were performed by the King, the Queen and their courtiers and, despite the eye-watering expense, held only once. This summer Banqueting House has a special display focusing on the various elements of the masque, with a special emphasis on Tempe Restored, performed in 1632.

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History Live! (2013)

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History Live! 2013

(organised by English Heritage, Kelmarsh Hall, Northamptonshire, 20-21 July 2013)

‘What is this strange contraption?’ It was 9:30am on a grey, cool Sunday morning and I was in a 12th-century encampment from the Holy Land (temporarily translated to a damp field in Northamptonshire), explaining the principle of photography to two Normans. Within five minutes’ walk were two thousand years of British history, ranging from a Roman legion to Second World War troops representing Britain, Germany, the USA, Russia and Poland. The day ahead would encompass tanks, trebuchets and muskets, thundering hooves and shattered lances, showers of arrows loosed from English yew, a shield wall, and the spine-tingling thrum of a Merlin engine, as a Spitfire burst through clouds of smoke to do a victory roll in the skies above. This was History Live! (formerly the Festival of History), English Heritage’s annual smorgasbord of a weekend celebrating British history.

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Life Among The Pirates: The Romance and the Reality (1995): David Cordingly

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★★★★

David Cordingly was a curator at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich for twelve years and was responsible for their 1992 exhibition Pirates: Fact and Fiction, which proved to be so popular that (rather than the planned run of four months) it stayed open for three years. As the public appetite for pirates was evidently so strong, he was invited to write a book on the back of the exhibition. Life Among The Pirates is lively and easy to read, and sets out to explore the gulf between the popular perception of pirates and the harsh reality, stretching from the Elizabethan privateers in the Spanish Main to the nineteenth-century Chinese pirates under the command of the savvy former courtesan Mrs Cheng. It’s a great introduction to the subject and has left me burning to finally read Treasure Island.

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Treasures of the Royal Courts (2013)

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van Herwijck: Elizabeth I: The Hampden Portrait

Tudors, Stuarts and the Russian Tsars

(Victoria and Albert Museum, London, until 14 July 2013)

Along with my Murillo adventures last weekend, I also visited the V&A, to see their  exhibition about the early years of diplomacy between the English court and the Tsars of Russia. This has a (rather tenuous) Lymond connection, as it opens with the expedition of the adventurer Richard Chancellor, who my fellow Dunnetteers will remember from The Ringed Castle. Naturally, considering my enthusiasm for all things Tudor and Stuart, I would have gone to the exhibition anyway, but the Dunnett angle offered a welcome little extra dose of piquancy.

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Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum (2013)

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Roman fresco of a couple: Terentius Neo and his wife

(British Museum, London, until 29 September 2013)

If last year’s blockbuster exhibition was Leonardo at the National Gallery, this year’s is Pompeii at the British Museum. Both names have the kind of pulling-power that make it virtually impossible to get tickets, although I’m happy to say that there is still availability for some of the less appealing slots (we visited at 9am on a Sunday morning). Besides, 300 tickets are released by the British Museum every day, so you can always queue before opening time in the hope of getting one. Do try to see it. You won’t be disappointed.

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