This was Diana Norman's first published novel, and copies of it are extremely rare and usually very expensive. I'd always wanted to check it out, so when a careless bookseller posted an only slightly imperfect copy on Abebooks at about a tenth of the going rate, I pounced on it.

It has the same setting, and a good deal of the same subject matter ( Read more... )

*I* giggled.

Scholars disagree over whether Richard I was really interested in getting to know Saladin over coffee or just looking for one fun night. Those who argue the former insist that organizing a whole crusade just for a one-night stand seems like an awful lot of effort, even if Saladin did carry an exceptionally large scimitar. More likely ( Read more... )

Some interesting news: a body that matches the description of Richard III has been unearthed in what used to be the Greyfriars churchyard, where he was buried.

http://www.examiner.com/article/have-the-remains-of-richard-iii-been-found

For some years, researchers had noted a peculiar epitaph for one William D'Eyncourt, preserved in Lincoln cathedral records, attesting that the aforesaid William was regia styrpe progenitus (of royal stock) and was raised in the court of King William II Rufus ( Read more... )

I posted awhile back about what appears to be an ersatz version of Richard I that appears in Arabic hero epics recorded by M.C. Lyons. I thought I'd post a bit more on it ( Read more... )

I am an English history buff--anything from 1066 to 1603 is what I love, though I freely admit to having a decided leaning towards the Tudors.  I believe in Richard III's basic innocence (at least in regards to his nephews' deaths), love Eleanor of Aquitaine, and have a great fondness for the love stories of John of Gaunt & Katherine Swynford and ( Read more... )

Found some info about this lady in Robert of Arbrissel: A Medieval Religious Life by Bruce Venarde ( Read more... )

Did anyone here watch the first episode of Helen Castor’s BBC series ‘She-Wolves’, about English medieval queens, last Wednesday?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01bgpm7/ ( Read more... )

I've posted a couple of times about the family of King John's illegitimate daughter Joan, who married Llywelyn Fawr. This post concerns their most obscure child, Susanna.

Susanna was possibly the youngest of Llywelyn and Joan's three daughters together (for evidence that Elen and Gwladys were Joan's daughters, see this post). She had one known ( Read more... )

In 'honor' of Orson Scott Card's recent butchering of Shakespeare's masterpiece, Hamlet, Scott Lynch has written "The So Much Less Gay and Not Written With Big Gay Words version of The Cronicle History of Henry V formerly by William Shakespeare"I sort of love Lynch's reimagining of Henry V as the sort of guy who would tell his bride, "You are very ( Read more... )