Suzannah Lipscomb's Blog, page 20
May 22, 2012
We won a Museums + Heritage Award!
[image error]To my absolute delight, All the King’s Fools – our innovative project at Hampton Court Palace with actors with learning disabilities playing the parts of natural fools at Henry VIII’s court – has won a Museums + Heritage Award for Excellence! Imagine a BAFTA for the heritage industry and you’ve got some sense of how amazing this is.
The project (which I’ve featured many times on this blog) was a wonderful collaboration between The Misfits Theatre Company, Historic Royal Palaces, Foolscap Productions, academics from the University of East Anglia and Oxford Brookes University and historical interpreters Past Pleasures. It was developed with help from the Arts Council England, and supported by a Wellcome Trust People’s Award.
If you missed it and would like to know more, there’s a brilliant dedicated website with film footage of the events. Well worth a watch.
April 23, 2012
Daily Mail’s Screen Detective
The Daily Mail has reviewed tonight’s Bloody Tales (Nat Geo, 8pm), with a great run-through of its gory tales. Mark Wareham figures out the derivation of ‘ketchup’ and spots my apparently ‘trendily studded nose’ in ‘dusty’, historical manuscripts, as per usual.
April 19, 2012
When gossip was good
I was surprised and chuffed to discover that BBC History Magazine featured an academic article of mine (‘Crossing Boundaries: Women’s Gossip, Insults and Violence in 16th-Century France’, from French History, Vol 25, No. 4) in their April edition.
It contains some wonderfully scandalous stories from the archives of southern France, which are also likely to be the subject of my next book.
You can read the full text of my article here at French History, if you subscribe, or here in its pre-print form.
April 12, 2012
Pick of the Day!
Both Radio Times and TV Times have chosen Monday 16 April's episode of Bloody Tales of the Tower as one of their Picks of the Day.
The Radio Times calls me and Joe Crowley 'a comely duo' (!) and describes the show's 'often grisly expose of torture and execution at the Tower of London'. It also has a feature on one of our stories – Josef Jakobs, the last man to be executed at the Tower of London.
The TV Times says that if you're planning to visit the Tower of London, 'this series reveals its bloody history' and gives the show 4 out of 5 stars.
Very pleased that two papers have chosen it as a highlight!
Airing on National Geographic Channel UK. Made by True North Productions.
Bloody Tales of the Tower Trailer
National Geographic have produced a rather swish trailer for our new series – Bloody Tales of the Tower – with me and Joe Crowley, which starts this Monday, 16th April, at 8pm!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=18xRocHnGxs
If you have access to NatGeoTV, I hope you'll be watching!
April 8, 2012
Bookends: Terribly Tudor
Dan Jones reviewed A Visitor's Companion to Tudor England in The Spectator a week or so ago. He starts…
'History publishers like a gimmick, so I assumed Suzannah Lipscomb's A Visitor's Companion to Tudor England (Ebury, £12.99) must be a cheeky rip-off of Ian Mortimer's Time Traveller's Guide series.'
Thankfully, he continues…
'Not so. In fact this is a rich, meticulously plotted field guide to the surviving architectural treasures of Tudor England: the houses, fortresses, palaces and battlefields that were trodden by our most famous royal dynasty, from Westminster Abbey and Windsor Castle to Kett's Oak and Burghley House (pictured).But it is more than just historical I-Spy. Lipscomb is an eloquent tour-guide, and each of her 50 destinations allows her deftly to unfold a different chapter of Tudor history.'
Read the rest of it here.
April 4, 2012
Sky News Sunrise for paper review
It was delightful to go into Sky News yesterday morning to review the papers with Eamonn Holmes, Charlotte Hawkins and Sam Delaney – even if it meant an eye-watering 4.30am start! This must explain why, as you'll notice, I was still remembering how to speak in the first few minutes.
We talked about the proposed new A levels, the viewing habits of teenage murderer, Daniel Bartlam; Argentina's president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner's shoddy use of history and whether the Queen is a vampire.
My agent has kindly put a clip on YouTube (forgive the short shrift given to others…):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp_2tbaeGyE
Guest post at On the Tudor Trail
A few days ago, I posted a guest post at Natalie Grueninger's On the Tudor Trail website to explain why I wrote A Visitor's Companion to Tudor England and why I think people should visit historic places.
It begins:
'I am frequently asked two questions: why am I a Tudor historian? And why do I think people remain fascinated by this period? The answer is the same: the Tudor era has all the best stories.
Consider: the remarkable sixteenth century contains our tabloid king – the much married Henry VIII – and our virgin queen – the unmarried Elizabeth I – and huge religious change – the overthrow, restoration and eventual displacing of the Roman Catholic church in England; centuries-old monasteries dissolved; heretics burnt and priests tortured. It is an age of threats against England – the attempted French invasion and the Spanish Armada – and of the discovery and colonisation of new worlds, the beginnings of empire and the founding of the navy. It is the age of Holbein and Shakespeare, of glorious architecture and palaces, and of some of the most extraordinary characters in British history…'
March 29, 2012
Launch party for A Visitor’s Companion
Some images from the launch party for A Visitor’s Companion to Tudor England, held at The Philip Mould Gallery in London on 14 March 2012.
Photos by John Cairns
Launch party for A Visitor's Companion
Some images from the launch party for A Visitor's Companion to Tudor England, held at The Philip Mould Gallery in London on 14 March 2012.
Photos by John Cairns
