Hello Nordmann, I am lost! Could you help?


Assuming that is a technological rather than an existential plea, Minette, see the 'Technical Adjustments' thread for an explanation.
If it is, however, a response to the sheer futility of life or the utter desolation of being then I can only suggest strong drink.

I often come back here in fear and trepidation, feeling guilty, sorry Arwe but you did ask..Catgern darling, don't blame yourself. . I was young and a girl, but I liked him, I didn't realize he was known about much, anyway I've gone off Ian Hislop lately, he's never as funny as Paul Merton...He's getting slightly pompous (and inaccurate?) as he grows more mainstream. But did I tell you about the time mum nearly killed Michael Ramsey? Really!This is name-dropping, but it was funny lol. He and dad were writing a book when dad died and before he retired he confirmed my brother but mum's famous handbag came into play; a small suitcase sized bag with medicinal things in it, including a large brick(?) and it was balanced where the hymn books go, we were up in the choir, and the procession passed beneath us when mum became emotional and dived for a hankie from it. The bag teetered as his shiny pink pate and lovely fluffy hair passed below! Eight pairs of hands moved faster than you can imagine to stop disaster! It worked! But could have been front page news! He asked to meet mum later so I don't think he knew.
It was so close! A painful and unusual death and acolytes rushing for cover! Had to tell you that, now you'll tell me off...:roll:Back to real History.

How very kind of you Ferval! What a nice thought. In truth it's both of the problems you suggest! I saw "The White Queen" today and am currently watching (sort of) "The Last Days of Anne Boylen" to get rid of it! I'm running out of space! All my "enemies" lined up except Starkey! Who speaks sense! What has gone wrong? Henry VIII killed Anne Boylen because he couldn't cope with another divorce, needed a male heir, was tired of Anne whom he blamed for the break with Rome, his mentor Wolseys's death and was becoming a monster who needed complete adulation which he would have with mousy Jane Seymour. Cromwell was always dispensable, Henry would smack him in front of people.Trumped up charges against Anne were his only way to legally kill her. Why is it being debated as though it was new?

My theory is that in the 1960s it was decreed that no one could excel in or fail academic subjects, not so for sport oddly! And so for the past 50 years the basics of History have been lost to us. never mind 1066 and all that, today few would get the joke of, "The Orange"! We do Nazis, without Prussia or Bismark or the Weimar or anti-semetic pograms) we do the Tudors without the Plantagenets and c19th industrialization without Marx or the up-risings of 1848, sod the Enlightenment! And so it goes on! Three generations of "teachers" have followed knowing diddly squat about the basics.
 
Who decided that History was "too tricky" to teach? And why? I knew a physics teacher who wanted to die when he was made to teach, "science", physics, chemistry and biology combined. Why do we always underestimate children rather than enthuse them? Something has gone badly wrong! I find I can't trust anyone with a degree anymore, I know of two people with "learning problems" who've gone to university, one has his essays written for him, lovely boy but thick as s..t. They pay extra. I wanted my daughters to go to university in London because if the teaching was rubbish at least they'd be able to have access to museums, libraries and art galleries, etc.. My eldest has a boyfriend whose a Phd but it took us several sessions to "appreciate" each other. I was thrilled to learn that he is intelligent!
 
I am tired of watching History programs which cover ground we did at O'Level made to look as though it is new and "ground-breaking". The reason why Philippa Gregoty, Alison Weir and Dr Susanah Lipscombe et al.,are so popular today (and paid so richly) to say nothing of Neill Ferguson (ye Gods) is because people desperately want to know more and they are the port in the storm! When will it be decided that we must stop insulting people's intelligence? And by whom? How long will it take to get back onto the "right track"? I could earn a lot privately tutoring rich kids but I won't. One of the happiest times of my life was doing F.E. at a "deprived" 6th form college near Port Talbot in South Wales, such enthusiasm! You disgust me Dr Lipscombe. 

At the next election I shall be voting Marxist or Green as the three main parties merge. However I was impressed by the interchange between Dianne Abbott and Michael Gove about education recently. I may not like them but what they said has always been so. Education is, probably always has been, the way out of poverty for so many and it isn't taught by not allowing anyone to feel a failure. So what is the point of the flaming Olympics? I may not be able to spell my own name but I can jump really, really high! Gold Medal Award, let us all applaud! And so why is education not sport exempt from excellence? Can a fast runner explain the theory of relativity? Will a poll vaulter solve poverty in Africa? Why this split "thought" process? It is totally illogical to suggest and teach that no child should feel an academic failure but all children should be made to love sport and excel. Why be healthy if your brain is empty?

Now that everyone has a degree, or could if they paid for it, what is the point of having one? I'd really like to know. Money can buy all. I know someone, not very bright, who on the payment of £3,000 is almost assured of an M.A.. It's at a university which has no faculty sorry department and course work will be E Mailed to her flat. There are two terms. One set aside for personally assessed work. If you need help, tough. Her would be "tutor" is a product of the current system. I estimate that unless this "system" is stopped in its tracks now, it will take another 40 to 50 years to get back to the ethos of education for education's sake and see off the money grabbing lunatics New Labour and the Coalition ushered in.

It's quite extraordinary that we live during a period when information is so easily accessible and yet "educationalists" tell us that it's too much to ask a 13 year old to read an entire book by Dickens or Hardy, Shakespeare is to be consumed through films one may be able to connect with and poetry is for Rappers. Little wonder we have a Literacy problem. Where on Earth does this leave History? 

Surely few can doubt that education is in trouble today? It is swiftly becoming the province of the wealthy and thick. Perhaps we should all read Hardy's "Jude the Obscure" again to see where this leads...And there can be little wonder that so many love, "The Tudors" because they've never been taught the truth by those who also don't know it. (Too earnest and hard hitting but it's honest)

Comes da revolooshun… well said minette, I’m right behind you.

I'm reading up about Edward IV at the moment (don't want to be too confused come Sunday night), and I must say I'm starting to feel a bit more sympathetic to the way in which the Tudors dealt with the nobility of England. What a bunch! You couldn't turn your back on any of them! Little civil wars broke out all over the place around 1468-71 between these competing over-mighty subjects: Percy v. Neville,  Berkeley v. Talbot (they had their own pitched battle at Nibley Green on 20th March 1470), Stanley v.Harrington, Welles v. Burgh, and the impetuous young Duke of Norfolk laid siege to the Paston family's castle  in Norfolk, daring to reply with astonishing curtness to the king's brother, Clarence (who had written to him on behalf of the royal council offering arbitration) that he would give up his quest for the forcible acquisition of Caister "for no duke in England"!

Then of course Clarence and Warwick turned on the king himself.

Some critics say that Edward, usually seen as a ruthless and able young man, was actually (like the Other Plantagenet Boy) far too soft with his over-mighty subjects. It was the Tudors who actually sorted out these aristocratic thugs. But is that a simplistic and/or inaccurate view? No doubt it is. I haven't read enough yet to decide:

"But what probably also came into play was a fatal flaw in Edward's character: a need to be liked, and a consequent inclination to conciliate, which alone seems to explain his dogged refusal to believe in the treason of those close to him, and his readiness to forgive even the most blatant acts of treachery. It was this total faith in his ability to win over opponents that led to the king's undoing when faced by an able and calculating politician like Warwick."

Just like Richard when dealing with Margaret Beaufort?

And if Richard ended up defeated and dead, Edward had, before him, ended up fleeing to Burgundy - a penniless ex-King of England. He was lucky to have got a second chance.

Minette Minor wrote:

The White Queen, by Philippa Gregotty, coming soon.
As someone who knew Grafton Manor and Grafton well, may I make some predicitions about the afore mentioned television series....
No mention will be made of, "the Hermitage across the Northampton Road". This is where it was located in the early 1960s and had Woodville tiles. With its three fishponds it's a place for clerics. To get there, secretly, one would have to march three miles from the Manor House, with horses, through the village to take "secret" food, blankets, wine etc., so that they could "not secretly" meet. The staff and villagers would hear all.
Whittlebury Forrest, still there today, as is Salsey, has never surrounded Grafton Manor. Due to the number of large oak trees it's mentioned in the Doomsday Book. "The Hermitage" is/was NOT present in Whittlebury Forrest.
Nobody will say, "let's have a thrilling day out at the village of Stony Stratford. It is always so much more accomodating than Northampton town"
No one will say, "my God Jacquetta! You and Richard are supposed to be the most handsome people in England! What went wrong"?
Jacquetta, with the gift of prophecy, will never say, "as the dowager duchess of Bedford, accused of witchcraft and the descendent of a mermaid from land-locked Luxumburg, I know there's no river here now but during the c19th the Grand Union Canal will branch out over there. So shall we make a tributary of the Ouse or Nene up"?  
No one will say, "I feel like a change! Let's go to Church at Stoke Bruerne, it's so pretty there and then we can go and shop in Towcester"!
I shall go away now but it's tough knowing that a magical place you grew up in, if my dad had lived 500 years earlier he well have married Liz Woodville and Edward Iv, (he'd have asked questions I think!) is about to be trashed by a fim crew and a woman out to make money. There was a village there once, the locals can't afford it any more. So terribly sad.

Great post Minette. Made me laugh and sigh in equal measure. Good to get some local insight too.

P.S. Not sure if you know but there's also a thread on Philippa Gregory (and The White Queen) on the History of Expression / Literature / Fiction board: https://reshistorica.forumotion.com/t23-philippa-gregory-should-she-be-shot

:roll:

Hurrah! Got in! But have I? Don't like this new format, sorry Q, Nordmann.
I was afraid to come back here after my rant about education etc., but Vizzer and Normanhurst, you understand! Many thanks! I'm not mad! I simply want to know what has gone so terribly wrong with History. Why do idiots rule the roost today? Apologies rant not at an end, We DO under estimate people's intelligence and have done for far too long. I don't understand why. But then I also don't understand why greedy money grabbing theives, Bankers, with gambling "problems" are treated with kid gloves and the poor are taxed and made to pay for the sins of the Bankers. Or do I? Of course "we" do. The "hedge fund managers" who believe they should be honoured for their blunders with loads of money, bankroll the three main political parties. Der!
Marx said in, "The Communist Manifesto",
"Laws are the mainfestation of the wishes of the ruling classes". This was in 1848. What has changed? Virtually all Politicians are corrupt, look how the Lib Dems have realized all they have stood for over the last 100 years was dodgy, eat your heart out John Stuart Mill, when they sensed ....power! The Fabian Legacy has long flown the nest of Blair's New Labour and the Conservatives are par vanu, no noblesse oblige, Osborne's family made wallpaper! Trade! Don't send your child to Eton or Westminster they can't teach basic maths or economics! Of course the spiteful Ian Duncan Smith can live on £63 for a week, he has a future to look forward to and a wealthy wife to pay his subs at "Whites". What a shambles. But who questions them? Jeremy Paxman practically sold his soul to become a member of "Garricks" and only the wonderful man from Splott, Cardiff, John Humphries can make the high and mighty quake in his 8.20am slot on "Today". He's been there and he has the T Shirt and intellect. Too many graduates of "meeja studies" ask sycophnatic questions.  

If these are the people who "rule" us what can we expect? Until people realize that they are being treated as idiots then nothing will change.The only people the Bankers and the Politicians fear are the people. BUT the people don't understand what power they have. Today it's been shown how the Met stitched up the murdered Stephen Lawrence, again! The Police are simply the tools of the government we are told we elect, even though we are currently being ruled by a Government no one elected, manifestos are disposable. England, the Cradle of Democracy. It wasn't until 1928 that 50% of the population, all women, got the vote. Don't ask about the USA!            

And so as the wicked, wretched poor and willingly unemployed go to food banks in the UK in 2013, when we are told there is "no money" but enough to spend trillions of pounds sterling on re-newing the nuclear deterent we can only use if the USA allows (at least Obama said we had an "essentia"l not a "special" relationship, they can't re-load or re-fuel to bomb Europe or the middle east without the UK as a willing stop over) us to. The rich/poor divide is almost as large as it was 100 years ago but at least the poor had some dignity, its lunatic fringe wasn't put on the Jeremy Kyle Show for all to ridicule. "Celebrity" wasn't the only way out, education was.          
As we sink lower and lower in the world charts of best educated countries, the rest of the world uses English and we can't, it may be useful for our leaders to have a dopey electorate but there comes a stage when it's embarrassing. Personally I usually have subtitles on when watching most American/English films, the divide is growing (but I adore watching "deluded" soups being made) and getting wider, hence Michael Gove's startled, inept panic. But it's too late. That is unless of course we use history, red in tooth and
claw.
Barbara Cartland, Alison Weir and Philippa Gregory are to History what Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and Pluto the Dog are to world literature. Entertaing, rich and pointless. However remind politicians of the Peasant's revolt of 1381 (due to John of Gaunt's poll tax) or the Russian Revolution of 1917 or  the Romanian uprising of 1989, the Hungarian uprising of 1956 or the Prague Spring of 1968 and politicians suddenly come to heel. History matters! People must realize what power they have, be it the individual or the mass, history teaches us to question the minitae, to ask important questions and always to be vigilant. If we forget we are doomed to repeat endlessly. If Weir and Gregory are such grand historians who encompass so much, so many periods, I'd like to hear them discuss and explain "The Terror" let loose by Robespierre in post revolutionary France with referenceto Danton of course. It would be fascinating and show us what great historians they are! At least we could lay this debate to bed then. Are they multi-faceted historians or aren't they? It's too late for them to say, "not my period". They are all embracing popular historians, as they so often tell us.

You really are onto something important SST. But I've lost my post! Sorry. Promise to return. You are doing such an able job anyway.
Cheers Minette.

blimey Minette, who rattled your cage... go girl, go get em an I'll hold ya handbag.

Ah, Minette, Minette, consider Marcus Aurelius:

"You may break your heart, but men will still go on as before." (VIII: 4)

Hope you return soon.

SST.

Gawd don't encourage her Norman, long winded political rants are all well and good but they have nought to do with the topic. On an appropriate thread please.

Now I'm being inappropriate but I want the the recipe for 'deluded soups'.

Isn't there a thread somewhere about why history matters?

I watched a programme on the box last night with the results of the dig in the car park, and the reputed finding of the remains of R111… including DNA identity.

So where does it go from here… what is the Richard third society about now… is there a need for this thread anymore… unless there is still doubt .

normanhurst wrote:

… is there a need for this thread anymore…

Probably not, normanhurst. Probably not.

Well the thread, though it is admittedly hard to recall, was actually about whether the lad bumped off the aristocratic tykes in the Tower of London or not. A subject that can run and run (and run, and run, and run .... good gawd).

By the way I'm still not sold on the DNA justification put forward by that team. A patrilineal proof would have been a clincher. Mitochondrial DNA would link half the continent to the guy in the car park. I've been thinking of staking my claim to the throne myself based on their logic.

Why would you need another throne Nordmann, you have one here.

Minette Minor wrote:

You think like a Tudor, totally different to the Plantagenet extended family. The Ps didn't kill women or children, that was a Tudor need and later urge!

Minette, you're extremely keen on dividing humanity into 'nice'  families and 'nasty'  families, and also on telling us all about your own family  (however irrelevant to the topic at hand). I was wondering whether you thought your own relatins and yourself more resembled the Plantagenets or the Tudors? At first sight, the humbleness of your origins would suggest you were more like the Tudors, but against that stands the fact that the Tudors proved to be a successful and popular dynasty...

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/henry-viii-the-saddam-of-the-tudor-court-8679946.html 

I guess Henry vii would not come too far behind and H8's Daughter Mary favoured burning, maybe it was a family problem.

Gran wrote:

I guess Henry vii would not come too far behind and H8's Daughter Mary favoured burning, maybe it was a family problem.

At first I wondered why Dickon Kiddiethrottle didn't top the list, but then I recalled that they were looking at people thought of as 'great' and/or 'successful'...

Catigern wrote:

At first I wondered why Dickon Kiddiethrottle didn't top the list, but then I recalled that they were looking at people thought of as 'great' and/or 'successful'...

Is Henry VIII now considered to be a great and successful king then? I thought his reign, apart from all the Showtime stuff, was actually a bit of a disaster for England? I think Sir Walter Raleigh got it right when he wrote, sixty years after Henry's death:

"If all the pictures and patterns of a merciless prince were lost in the world, they might all again be painted to the life out of the story of this king...But beside the sorrows which he heaped upon the fatherless and widows at home and besides the vain enterprises abroad, wherein it is thought he consumed more treasure than all our victorious kings did in their several conquests, what causeless and cruel wars did he make upon his own nephew, King James the Fifth? What laws and wills did he devise to establish the kingdom in his own issues, using his sharpest weapons to cut off and cut down those branches which sprang from the same root that himself did?"

Raleigh - or is it Ralegh? I am never sure which spelling is correct -  may have been trying to grovel to James VI when he wrote that, but he was certainly not alone in his criticism of Bluff King Hal: most discussions of Henry VIII emphasise this monarch's cruelty, dissimulation, deceit and monstrous egotism. If not a throttler of kiddies, he certainly ordered the butchering, the boiling and the burning of many men - and women. Even the usually restrained and ironic Philipp Melanchthon described Henry as "another Nero".

Makes our Richard look almost saintly!

Minette Minor wrote:

You really are onto something important SST. But I've lost my post! Sorry. Promise to return.
Cheers Minette.

Do hurry up and come back, Minette. I'm dying to know what it is of importance I'm on to. I've forgotten, I'm afraid.

    

Islanddawn wrote:

Gawd don't encourage her Norman, long winded political rants are all well and

At bloody last! Broken in, so where to start? Will this work? Anyway, politics/rants do matter Islandawn. I'm complaining about the UK 2013 imagine, if possible, what "rants" were like during the mid c15th, a time of civil war, a mad king who had been made ruler of the country since he was 9 months old, dominmated by an inept royal council presided over by a family of legitimised greedy and inept Beaufort blowflies from John of Gaunt? And a merciless queen whom nobody trusted. Followed by a usurping king Edward IV, (attempting to redress the balance that mad king Henry VI, whose grandfather Henry IV had also usurped the throne) aged 18? Of course it gets worse but we mustn't rant here! Politics only matter to us; now; today. If you believe this then leave history alone. It won't make sense. History is all about politics and battles and wars are the outcome of political manoevering gone wrong! It must be nice to be so pleasantly naive.

I've no idea if this will emerge but my apologies for boring you Cat. According to my mother the greatest of sins. 'Ark at me there I go again! I don't believe you will agree but we have learned quite a lot about your homelife, academic life and flibberty-gibbet students too along the way. Merton College needs you! Sod Huddersfield.
Ferval! You must watch Ina Garten, from, "the Hamptons" where the posh Americans live and enjoy, de-constructed French bouquets(?), and all forms of European "cuisine", where deluded soups evolve, consomee(?) and creame fraiche may be ordered on line. Pretentious homliness in all its glory! What I don't get is why wealthy Americans want to be WASPS? In kilts!
   
Rambling? Will this be posted and why the format? But SST what I think you were coming to, can't see the post, was RIII's character upon which all hinges. After February 4th 2013, the one descent thing Leicester University has done was to enlist Professor Mark Lansdale and Julian Boon from the university to write, "Richard III - a psychological portrait". Now that we know more about the physical man, discussed in tandem with his known actions, they dissect them.
The main reason I joined the Richard III Society was to get at the research members carried out and their pamphlets named in so many bibliographies and this is a gem. It discusses, "was Richard a murderous psychopath"? Narcissism, Cowardice, Psychosis, Machiavellism etc., etc., but the aspect I find most fascinating is how his deformity, which grew from the age of ten approximately, affected his state of mind and actions. We all know what a loyal and extremely capable soldier he was, leading by example which acquired loyality in itself, yet now we know he suffered from scoliosis of the spine it makes these actions more extraordinary, he must have been in pain. However, what of his state of mind?                
The psychologists agree that due to his medieval Christian background he could have gone either of two ways. I would write more but am fully aware there will be guffaws of laughter unless the work is read in full. The Ricardian Bulletin, March 2013. A truly fascinating piece.  
What a strange place this can be! Cheers, Minette.

Catigern,
What an odd, impertinant question. As Tolstoy says in Anna Karenina, "all happy families are alike and all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way". If I mention my family too much I apologize. Yet it's useful. I believe I've led something of a, "medieval life".
Personally I was extremely fortunate to come from a large and happy family until they began to die in a medival manner. I believe it has given me an insight into how medieval people thought and behaved. Today people seem to be constantly shocked when a member of their family dies and their first encounter with death usually concerns a grandparent. I only knew one of mine and that was fleeting. One grandfather's reason for death was given, as, "a broken heart" after the death of his wife.
As a child I loved animals and at one stage had thirty mice, seven guinea pigs, two rabbits, a cat, a dog and a goldfish; then the dog had seven puppies. They sometimes fought, died, gave birth and I learned about sex through them at a young age. This is the abridged version and I believe all childen should have pets.
I am totally and unashamely Welsh but unlike the Tudors my families hail from Carmenthenshire and Pembrokeshire, not north Wales and I have step relations all over the place including Edinburgh, lol Morningside. However, as clergymen are intinerant beings, your bishop tells you where to live, I'd say my "spiritual home" is in south Northamptonshire, Stoke Bruerne/Grafton Regis/Alderton and Shutlanger. The soft rolling hills and sea of South Wales and the flat lands and wide open skies of Nothampton. I'm very good with trees, fauna and flora to say nothing of castles. I am a cross breed. Happy now? Or shall I be castigated for this. As though I care.

It must be nice to be so pleasantly naive? Don't be silly Minette.

The 2013 political scene has very little to do with Medieval England, and is extremely tedious to all of us not in the UK to read constant off topic rantings on British politics. I dare say you'd be equally annoyed if the thread was broken with rantings on Norwegian and Irish politics from Nordmann, Danish politics from Nielsen, Scottish politics from ferval, French politics from MM, NZ politics from Caro or Greek and Australian politics from myself? And somehow trying to compare it all to a political system some 700 years old, and one that is as alike to today as chalk and cheese.

And believe me I do enough rantings on politics to annoy anyone, but on the appropriate board where everyone is there to discuss current affairs.

I rather enjoy off topic ramblings, especially my own.

Minette Minor wrote:

I believe I've led something of a, "medieval life"... it has given me an insight into how medieval people thought and behaved...As a child I loved animals and at one stage had thirty mice, seven guinea pigs, two rabbits, a cat, a dog and a goldfish... and I learned about sex through them at a young age (I am totally and unashamely Welsh)... I'm very good with ... fauna ...

 TOO much information!   

Now I can see where I went wrong in phrasing my earlier arguments.

Let me try again.
 
My favourite pub in Lancaster is the John O' Gaunt on Market Street.  This proves that Richard did, in fact, kill the Princes in the Tower.

Two of my relatives also died in a medieval fashion.  Auntie Beatrice contracted Black Death from a discarded Slush Puppy whilst on a weekend break to Rhyl, whilst Grandad Flump accidentally got caught up in the Warming Pan Plot, was beheaded as a traitor and had his head rammed onto a spike on the walls of York to be pecked clean by ravens.

AR

That's incredible, AR. Beatrice and Flump might actually be the two in this still from a CCTV camera stationed outside the Garden Tower, Tower of London, taken on the evening of June 30th 1483. The two were seen loitering in the area pretending (unsuccessfully) to be two youngsters in the first grip of passionate romance. When challenged they apparently muttered something about "bloody royalty" and "Pope Gregory" and ran off. Of course they could have muttered "bloody royalties" and "Philippa Gregory" - it was foggy and hard to hear things in that light.



Methinks the mystery is finally drawing to a close ...

The poor woman may have thought it was a hot and passionate embrace, but it appears the er gentleman is leading the damsel astray, and his aim was pinching the rings off her finger.

Which is proof that Dickie was an usurper I suppose, knicking rings is not that far removed from knicking crowns.

Good lord, Nordmann!  What a find!  Poor old Auntie B was the best part of five hundred years old when I first met her, but the pursed lips, bun and big sleeves are unmistakeable.   That's definitely not Grandad Flump, though. In 1483 he was banged up in Ripon clink awaiting the Assizes for the capital crime of Being Beastly To St Richard.  Thinking about it, he didn't have a lot of luck with our nascent criminal justice system.

So, I can only assume the gentleman dallying with Beatrice in the clip is none other than Flight Sergeant Chuck Jerky, a B52 pilot from Hot Wang, Nebraska, who gave Auntie B nylons and knocked her up in the car park of the Red Lion in 1944.  We should have known that those perfidious Yanks would have been up to their necks in the besmirching of St Richard somewhere.  This is what happens when your brain gets addled with a high fat diet and silly notions of republicanism.

Regards,

AR

Oh dear!
Looks as though this topic has died off. But will it? 
I can only hope it wasn't me and I do enjoy other people's rants, whatever nationalities they hail from; it shows they care about...something.

It's sad that this has ground to a halt as Philippa Gregory's just got going, supplementing Her "White Queen", "Red Queen" and "off-Pink Princess" with her "REAL White Queen". Was the former series all lies?

She appears to have taken her fondness for water to new extremes with her trendy, "trout pout".
And she was standing in the Fountain Court of Raglan Castle having told us how crushed the Beaufort Bitch was having waved goodbye to son Henry at a place which was not Tenby, being rude about the kindly Herberts, who owned stately Raglan as she announced, "this is where Margaret B retired to"! Der! She thought we would all believe that a different view of Raglan Castle, Monmouthshire, could make us believe it was Bedfordshire. A cheap trick for someone who's cried all the way to the bank.      

Oh well, I've burned my boats as an untouchable. BUT I'm still reeling from the shock that Leicester has finally come to heel. The ugly, small, Victorian "Cathedral" is now going to knock down it's chancel to accomodate the pre-paid for white table top tomb and re-design it in a rose shape...And it may even pay some homage to the fact that RIII was a Roman Catholic. Previously the Dean and Chapter had declared that there was no space for the tomb and a plaque or slab would do to comemmorate RIII. Meanwhile Leicester City makes plans for a new "visitor centre" for "Ricardian Tourists, estimating it will make them all a small fortune.
Meanwhile the Plantagenet Society takes Leicester to the High Court to insist Richard is buried at York according to his wishes.

It's quite startling how much can change in six months and how the City of Leicester under-estimated public opinion. I've been trying out ideas here for ages to test the waters. I've been shocked and awed in equal measure. And just as it gets exciting the posts die away. WHY?
I can't spend all my time irritating you. Believe me in the year to come, when it will finally be decided where King Richard III should lie there will be fireworks!
Speak soon or forever hold your peace....
Cheers Minette.

Is that painting from Breughal the younger?

Lucas Cranach the elder, Minette. German renaissance artist.
Better view of it here:
Old Man and Young Woman
I doubt very much that the thread has fizzled out, at least permanently. Everything's been pretty quiet here for a while as people do their summer stuff. I'll be doing some travelling from Tuesday myself so won't be in much over the next few weeks too.

That's a shame Nordmann, I shall miss you but I hope you have a happy time travelling. Personally I don't understand why people like being so very hot. Of course we all love sunshine but heat makes everyone bad tempered, don't you think? 
Cranach! I should have known that. Like a UC Challenge one gets wrong. But his wig and her clothes don't match, though she is dressed in the "German style" and both look scared rather than lascivious. A Breughal could have pulled it off.
Anyway, I'm pleased to hear that this thread is not dead yet, I stay away for periods of time and wonder what has happened aware that I often write total nonsense and stir up feelings. Perhaps I should stay away for longer, yet if I did who would people shout at?
 
May I suggest that we all shout at Leicester? In February the city was making announcements concerning what they would do with the remains of king Richard III. Six months later, having engaged with the world, the city is almost suggesting how they shall make money from his bones. What to do with an anointed king and man? While Super Market Extra explains to us what a "royal" baby may look like and what privileges it will enjoy. Such ludicrous duplicity.
The pampered Queen Mother never had to go through all of this and she wasn't even really royal. Whenever I pass her "gates" I cringe at the bad taste of this expensive "display". Hyde Park Corner at rush hour and one's subjected to total vulgarity when least needed or wanted and Princess Diana still only has her "commemorative ditch" at the Serpentine.
It truly makes one wonder who or what rules?
Money obviously, but the monarchy can't have it both ways, the unquestioned right to govern due to birth and the right to "off-load" those who may cause embarrassment. But they do. As Princess of Wales, Diana should have had something named after her, for example the second crossing from England into Wales, which often causes confusion, but we know it won't happen. No hospital, hospice or public building bears her name. Prince Charles and the fragrant Camilla are the Prince and Princess of Wales, they want Diana to be forgotten. What hope does the last Plantagenet king Richard III possibly have if the, "people's princess" can be disposable?
The monarchy has not survived for the past last 528, when the un-royal Tudors conquered England with French backing, without being totally ruthless and only an idiot would believe that anything had changed.
Hope you have a nice holiday Nordmann, best wishes, Minette.

Minette Minor wrote:

May I suggest that we all shout at Leicester?
The monarchy has not survived for the past last 528, when the un-royal Tudors conquered England with French backing, without being totally ruthless and only an idiot would believe that anything had changed.

I'd like to start the shouting at Leicester by shouting 'Why on earth are you messing about with a pretty little cathedral for the sake of the sort of idiots who would join a fan club devoted to a bloodthirsty, child-murdering, treacherous, cowardly, cannibalistic, grasping usurper whom the English people were glad to see the back of five hundred years ago?!'

As for the monarchy's ruthlessness, it was just the same in the centuries before Henry the Liberator helped the English people throw off the yoke   of the upstart Yorkist pretenders and restore the rightful (sub-Lancastrian) line to the throne. Only an idiot would believe differently. 

OK, I’ve had it now. Especially today when I’m avoiding the news so I won’t be engulfed by a tsunami of vapid guff about the impending arrival of the latest parasite who, by dint of some judicious shagging by its ma and pa, will be presented as somehow entitled to our respect, admiration and, heaven help us, love.  It’s bad enough seeing people today who are entitled to the same voting rights as me voicing such puerile crap without reading the thoughts of those who can pin such emotional incontinence and personal identification into the rights and wrongs of past parasites and whether one thug was slightly less appalling than another and with slightly more right to indulge his egomania never mind his religious delusions on a helpless populace.
 
That feels much better, as you were folks.

Well said Ferval.

How many reigning monarchs have there been with 3 generations of heirs lined up behind, and waiting for their turn? It is begining to look like a bus stop at rush hour.

ferval wrote:

OK, I’ve had it now. Especially today when I’m avoiding the news so I won’t be engulfed by a tsunami of vapid guff about the impending arrival of the latest parasite who, by dint of some judicious shagging by its ma and pa, will be presented as somehow entitled to our respect, admiration and, heaven help us, love.  It’s bad enough seeing people today who are entitled to the same voting rights as me voicing such puerile crap without reading the thoughts of those who can pin such emotional incontinence and personal identification into the rights and wrongs of past parasites and whether one thug was slightly less appalling than another and with slightly more right to indulge his egomania never mind his religious delusions on a helpless populace.
 

Now, now, ferval, don't p*ss on our parade. Just think, a little Prince James christened up at Balmoral perhaps - isn't that a thrilling prospect for all you Scots? That was one speculation at our Bible Study coffee morning yesterday. How I wish you could have been there: your "judicious shagging" remark would have gone down a treat   with the ladies. I'd have been spluttering into my Nescafe.

You are very unkind to suggest that Catigern is emotionally incontinent: I find his devotion to Henry Tudor rather touching (if sadly misguided).

A thrilling prospect for the local tourist board certainly and I see that the royal Balmoral butcher has produced a commemorative sausage. I'm saying nothing.

I'm pleased to see that you at least have registered that my outburst was not aimed at any one particular poster, getting a tad overwrought on the topic is not solely confined to the RIII camp.

What are your thoughts on PG's 'documentary' programme? I can't comment on historical accuracy but I can on her choice of words; 'loaded' seems appropriate.

ferval wrote:

A thrilling prospect for the local tourist board certainly and I see that the royal Balmoral butcher has produced a commemorative sausage. I'm saying nothing.

I'm pleased to see that you at least have registered that my outburst was not aimed at any one particular poster, getting a tad overwrought on the topic is not solely confined to the RIII camp.

What are your thoughts on PG's 'documentary' programme? I can't comment on historical accuracy but I can on her choice of words; 'loaded' seems appropriate.

Overwrought actually means overworked - leads to metal fatigue, I suppose, if you are an iron railing. I've never been underwrought, but I'm tempted to give it a go.

Haven't watched the PG programme yet as I've been rather overwrought this week with visitors. Will have time - all being well -  to view the offering tonight and will report back later.

PS Re royal bangers -  one of my friends went to some horsey happening at Gatcombe Park and she visited the farm shop there. To her amazement she found herself actually being served by the Princess Royal. My friend complimented HRH on the quality of the Gatcombe sausages: "You do a splendid sausage here, m'am," she said. Well, that's her story - I think she made it up.

I'm still utterly ashamed of myself for curtseying to the Countess of Wessex. It was a fund-raising charity event and we had been told we could decide whether we curtseyed or not. I'd made up my mind I wouldn't, but at the last minute I came over all grovelly and sank into a complete obeisance - full port de bras with reverence - as if I'd just performed Giselle at the Royal Opera House. I must have looked a complete idiot.

Here's how you are meant to do it (but don't forget to remove the book).



EDIT: I meant the Countess of Wessex, of course, not Essex - don't think there's been an Earl of Essex for ages, with or without a Countess.

EDIT: Wrong - there is an Earl of Essex, but it's all a bit complicated:

The line of the sixth Earl failed on the death of the seventh Earl's grandson, the ninth Earl, in 1981. The succession was unclear and it was not until 1989 that the late Earl's third cousin once removed, Robert Edward de Vere Capell, managed to prove his claim, and became the tenth Earl. He was the great-grandson of the Hon. Algernon Henry Champagné Capell (younger brother of the sixth Earl), son of the aforementioned the Hon. John Thomas Capell (half-brother of the fifth Earl), son of the second marriage of the fourth Earl. The titles are held by his only son, the eleventh Earl, who succeeded in 2005. William Jennings Capell, a retired grocery clerk from Yuba City, California and distant cousin of the 11th Earl, is the heir presumptive to the Earldom of Essex. He will be the 12th Earl if the current earl, Paul Capell, 11th Earl of Essex (currently 68 and unmarried), dies without legitimate male issue.

A retired grocery clerk from Yuba City, California, USA is the heir presumptive?!

EDIT: MM told me to put back what I'd edited, so I have.

ferval wrote:

OK, I’ve had it now. Especially today when I’m avoiding the news so I won’t be engulfed by a tsunami of vapid guff about the impending arrival of the latest parasite who, by dint of some judicious shagging by its ma and pa, will be presented as somehow entitled to our respect, admiration and, heaven help us, love.  It’s bad enough seeing people today who are entitled to the same voting rights as me voicing such puerile crap without reading the thoughts of those who can pin such emotional incontinence and personal identification into the rights and wrongs of past parasites and whether one thug was slightly less appalling than another and with slightly more right to indulge his egomania never mind his religious delusions on a helpless populace.
 
That feels much better, as you were folks.

Good grief, ferval, that was a rant   worthy of Minette herself!

Say what you like about the royals (yea, even unto 'they're all alien space lizards in human-skin disguise!' ), but at least Wills & Harry do real, worthwhile, highly skilled and demanding jobs, unlike all the showbiz tossers, politicians and stupid footballers who are also presented by the meejah as 'role models'...

Oh lord, Catigirn, don't start me on "celebrities" in general, my blood pressure is high enough already.

What you say about the boys' occupations is, I suppose, correct although I'd prefer it didn't have to continue the fine old royal tradition of killing people and isn't Wills (that's a tobacco company, not a man's name surely) going to pack in his useful employment some time soon to settle into a career of advanced hand shaking and free style waving?

I will now retire and allow the thread go back to Who Done it. But before I go, I noticed in the marriage bed scene, Ricky had a remarkably smooth and well muscled back even if we didn't see much below the shoulders. Maybe the apparently more graphic American version has an extra twist?

Just for Meles meles over on the bad weather thread! You'd have laughed even louder if you'd seen me, MM. Here's how I fancied myself:



The reality was more like...

Sort of tangled up (but my back was straight).

You are egging me on to get me into trouble. Good job the Boss is on his hols - let's hope the page turns before he gets back. Ballet reverences and curtsies are slightly off topic for the Princes in the Tower thread (also sausages).

PS That's not me, by the way!!

... looks like she's trying to play "Twister" .... solo!

But alas Temp, you're like me ... We remember how once we were and what we could once do .... but now it seems that while the mind is still willing to give it a go, the flesh is weak and doesn't what to play.... Hey ho, c'est la vie!

Meles meles wrote:

But alas Temp, you're like me ... We remember how once we were and what we could once do .... but now it seems that while the mind is still willing to give it a go, the flesh is weak and doesn't what to play.... Hey ho, c'est la vie!

Alas indeed, MM! They do not last long, those days of magenta mascara   and fluffy tutus. But let us not, like the tragic Ernest Dowson, despair: we still have books and music and conversation.

Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam
 by Ernest Dowson
The brief sum of life forbids us the hope of enduring long. –Horace

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.



So, after this slight deviation, back to the Princes in the Tower. I'm tempted to think the unthinkable this morning. What if Richard of Gloucester *did* (however reluctantly) order the deaths of his nephews - how does that affect our view of Margaret Beaufort, the Stanley brothers and Buckingham, not to mention Henry Tudor? Could Catigern possibly be right - was Henry Tudor hailed as a "liberator"? Were the people of England actually sick to death of the Plantagenets and their incessant, murderous squabbles?

PS ferval - still haven't watched the PG programme - will try to get round to it tonight!

Temperance wrote:

Could Catigern possibly be right - was Henry Tudor hailed as a "liberator"? Were the people of England actually sick to death of the Plantagenets and their incessant, murderous squabbles?

 It wasn't a democracy Temp, where the people of England had a say in who ruled. I doubt whether they really cared one way or another whose self important bum was in the big chair, just as long as they were left in peace to get on with their own lives.

Possibly the nobles or elite were sick to death of the Plantagenets though, but even saying that would be a generalisation. Obviously 'some' were fed up, or Tudor would not have had any support.