Tudors, Beatles and Achaians

[selenak]

One drawback of this year's book fair: Roland Emmerich saw it fit to premiere his Oxfordian schlock "Anonymous" here, and to rant about the still lasting evil "conspiracy of silence" that ensures the poor Earl of Oxford still isn't celebrated while the yokel from Stratford is. Now I didn't attend either premiere or rant, because I'm not masochistic

Comments

[zahrawithaz]

LOL for your comments on _Song of Achilles_. Who can stand Achilles, really?

Though I still need to check on Jo Graham...

And it's astonishing to think of how little attention Henry VII has gotten, though it's also hard to imagine him as the star of his own narrative, rather than a foil to his son.

[selenak]

Other than his fanboy Alexander the Great... More seriously, there are two moments where Homeric Achilles comes across as human to me, when he listens to Priam and hands over Hector's corpse, and in the Odyssey when his shade tells Odysseus he'd rather be an ordinary farmer and alive than a hero and dead (something usually ignored by his fanboys in the ancient world), but other than that...

I just saw there is a review of "The Winter King" in today's Observer: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oct/16/winter-king-thomas-penn-review.

[zahrawithaz]

Well, yeah, Alexander. Easier to fanboy Achilles once he was dead and there were political uses of him...And I concede that moment in the Odyssey, which is utterly lovely--but I don't think it's coincidence that he's more appealing in a walk-on part in someone else's story than in his own.

Thanks for the review link!

[angevin2]

The Yale English Monarchs series has a pretty good bio of Henry VII (I can't remember who wrote it). It is comprehensive and not really interested in the History's Greatest Monster narrative. ;)

[innocentsmith]

I can't stop facepalming about that Roland Emmerich movie. There's a giant billboard on my drive to work, demanding, "WAS SHAKESPEARE A FRAUD?" Uh. No? At least no more than any other writer and actor

[selenak]

As I understand it, TWO illegitimate children, the second one an incestous one to boot, and given this is the director making a film where there are no black slaves in American Revolution era South Carolina and everyone gets payed for their work, I doubt he came up with a justfication.

I just saw there is a review of "The Winter King" in today's Observer: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oct/16/winter-king-thomas-penn-review.

[redfiona10]

I'm with innocentsmith on this one, I think Henry VII is one of the few monarchs to leave a country in a better state than he found it, but he didn't do it by being particularly good or kind or nice, or warlike, he did it by accountancy, which tends to be a thing ignored.

[selenak]

By accountancy and finding some pretty nasty methods to tax his subjects, which isn't to say I disagree: he did leave the country in a better state than he found it.