Susan Higginbotham's Blog: History Refreshed by Susan HIgginbotham, page 44

Historical Tweets, Medieval- and Tudor-Style

As some of you might know, there's a website called Historical Tweets. Here are a few of my own contributions to this worthy endeavor. Have you got some? (Messages have to be 140 characters or less.)

Edward II:
Found someone to fill the void in my heart. Hugh's OK with the rowing too. Wonder if anyone would fuss if I gave him some land in Wales.

Isabella:
Going to France to spend some time with the family and make a few business contacts. Sweet!

Edward IV:
Waiting for Hastings to show up with yet anot

Thomas Vaughan, Executed June 25, 1483

On June 25, 1483, three men died at the command of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who would become Richard III the next day. All three were intimately associated with Edward V: Anthony Woodville, his maternal uncle; Richard Grey, his half-brother; and Thomas Vaughan, his chamberlain. You can read about their execution here and about Richard Grey here.

All three men's deaths were tragic and most likely amounted to nothing less than judicial murder, but Thomas Vaughan's fate is particularly sad. A We

An Interview With Me, and Playing with Bookshelves

I was pleased to see that Heather Domin has posted an interview she did with me as part of a write-up for the Historical Novels Review. Thanks, Heather! You can enjoy Heather's online serial novel, Valerian's Legion: The Soldier of Raetia, here.

My novel about Margaret of Anjou is beginning to take more of a shape. I've almost decided where I want to start it and where I want to end it, and I'm getting a sense of which historical characters will play major roles. And I found more useful sources t

Words, Words, Words!

There's been an interesting discussion on Nan Hawthorne's blog about historical accuracy in which the question of word usage has come up. Should writers of historical fiction try to "write forsoothly"? Or simply to avoid using any words that weren't current during the period in question? Or should they stick to modern language and usage? Or should they just say to heck with it and have a medieval English heroine speaking like a 1980's American teenager, as I've seen in some romance novels?

I won'

Love Me, Love My Author?

I have a confession to make: I've never read a novel by Dorothy Dunnett. I've never even tried. I do, however, have a copy of King Hereafter in my book annex, otherwise known as my garage. But that's the closest I've come to reading her.

One reason I suspect I've let King Hereafter sit forlornly in the garage is the overzealousness of some of Dunnett's readers, who take the decided opinion that if you don't care for Dunnett's works, you must be simply too dense to grasp her wit and subtlety. I s

Monday Update

Last week was a pretty miserable one for me, between spending one night in the emergency room with a relative, having to replace the water heater for the second time in two years, and not having the fun of attending the Historical Novel Society conference, so I sorely needed some cheering up yesterday with a productive trip to the library. And it was productive! Not only did I find almost everything on Margaret of Anjou that I came for, the library staff very kindly intercepted one journal for m

A Despenser at Dunstable, 1334

One of the fun things about using a lesser-known historical figure as a subject of a novel is that when you run into something about him--anything--you're absolutely delighted. So a while back when I saw in Collectanea topographica & genealogica, Vol. IV (on Google Books) that the hero of my soon-to-be-reissued second novel, Hugh and Bess, was recorded as being at a tournament at Dunstable in 1334, I was thrilled, even though the tidbit never made it into the novel.

After resisting the forces of

Richard Grey, Elizabeth Woodville's Second Son

Richard Grey was the younger of Elizabeth Woodville’s two sons by her first husband, Sir John Grey, who died at the second battle of St. Albans on February 17, 1461. Richard’s birth date is unknown, although his older brother, Thomas Grey, was probably born around 1455, according to the inquisition postmortem of his uncle Richard Woodville.

On May 14, 1475, Richard was made a Knight of the Bath, alongside his older brother and his royal half-brothers as well as his uncle Edward Woodville. Another

The Stolen Crown, and a Handy Website

Last night at about 1:00 a.m., I put the finishing touches to my Buckingham novel, now called The Stolen Crown. If all goes well, look for it in 2010 sometime!

I'm now pondering what to write about next. I think it's going to be about a Margaret: either Margaret of Anjou, Margaret Beaufort, or Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury. The first and third Margarets are the ones who appeal to me most as subjects. Doing a novel about Margaret of Anjou would let me write about the early period of the War

Grave Matters

Here are a couple of more pictures from my trip to Pere Lachaise Cemetery this April. Good medievalist that I am, I took a picture of Abelard and Heloise's tomb, but unfortunately, it was surrounded by scaffolding. (You can see a better picture here.)



I'm afraid I didn't catch the name of this gentleman, but he certainly looks like a morning person:



And here is the grave of Victor Noir, a French journalist who was shot by Pierre Bonaparte while trying to arrange the terms of a duel. (Some guys wil