Charlie Fenton > Recent Status Updates

Didn’t realise how much effort was put into making sure everything is as accurate as possible, even with the royal letter arriving:
‘Kimberley also made all the envelopes by hand and cut them to the much smaller size of letters in the period. As the King owned the Royal Mail, letters sent from Buckingham Palace didn’t require postage stamps; their envelopes were franker with the ‘Privy Purse’ stamp.’

‘The King was right, she supposes, for that instant was a whole, entire betrayal: Thomas may as well have been her lover then, and the King may as well have been a cuckold, for the merging of their eyes was more intimate by far than any night she has passed in the King’s bed. The thought is as good as the deed, some churchmen will tell you.’

‘Relief washes over her. She is reprieved - for now. But she is struck more than ever by the knowledge that her safety hangs on the whims of a volatile old man. The haste of Henry’s about-turn makes her wonder if this was more some kind of devious test than a trap. She wouldn’t put it past him. And what, anyway, is true friendship, in someone as mercurial as the King?’

‘So high was his esteem for the law that it tended to become, in his view, a safe guide for conscience. Such he deemed the act of Parliament abolishing Papal jurisdiction. He appears to have had little if any doubt of his own or Henry’s actions in the divorces of Catherine and Anne of Cleves, since both cases had been legally conducted.’

Audiobook version (people don’t seem to bother putting them on here anymore).

‘Katherine has been determined to create a feeling of family for this disparate collection of souls who, for all their privilege, have been so lacking in love. Even Edward, the apple of his father’s eye, the answer to everything, has been so wrapped up, so kept away from things, that he has become uncomfortable with affection. She hopes that will change.’

‘The reluctance of his elderly body drives him into desperate rages for which he is pitifully sorry come the morning. Katherine’s resilience is impenetrable; after all, Henry is not the first vicious man she has had in her bed... Henry wants another son in the nursery; that is the source of his rage. When he fixes his pebble gaze on her, asking, “So, wife, what news?” and all she can do is lower her eyes‘

‘This is the last mention she [Anne Askew] makes of Gardiner. He evidently gave her up as an impossible person. Others continued to urge her to subscribe to the orthodox position, but in vain, so the law was allowed to take its course.’

‘Could she love him as a father, she wonders. At times she feels she could. But what of those moments when he is like an overgrown infant in a tantrum? What of the other side of him: the blustery, vain youth with a vicious streak? She cannot reconcile all the different parts of him into one person. She wonders if he is thinking of the marriage vows he has made five times before?’

'can be no doubt that Gardiner was heartily opposed to Barnes’ opinions, but it seems equally certain that his objection to Barnes at this time was primarily an objection to his patron. He judged the moment had come to strike at Cromwell and saw that Cromwell’s most vulnerable point was his support of continental situation, as we have seen, shifted in Cromwell’s favour, and Gardiner was excluded from the Council.'

‘There is not a shred of tenderness in him. His jaw is gripped tight; he is locked on to his prize and will not be turned. It only begins to fully dawn on her now that the King will take her for a wife and she will not have any choice in the matter. All these men - the King, her brother, Hertford - have sealed her fate. She is no more free than she was as a girl.’

Audiobook version (not on here)

‘Just before Wolsey’s final interview with the King, the French ambassador, Du Bellay, wrote that he felt sure that some of the Cardinal’s protégés - hinting perhaps at Gardiner and Tuke, although he named none - had betrayed him. Of modern historians Mr. Brewer remarks that it is not easy to decide whether or not Gardiner helped in the designs of the Norfolk-Boleyn party to estrange the King from Wolsey.’

‘Lady Mary sits in her bedchamber engulfed in a silk robe. She looks frail and puffy about the face; her youth seems to have deserted her entirely. Katherine does the mental calculation, trying to remember how much younger Mary is than her. It is only about four years, she thinks, but Mary looks wizened and had a feverish glaze to her eyes - the legacy of the treatment she has received at her father’s hands’

‘For Richard, having lost his son and his wife, the rumours that he had murdered Anne and planned to marry his own niece would have been incredibly hurtful. Unless he was monstrous enough to have been behind these things, they were cruel stories used to undermine his support, and his public denial demonstrates a degree of exasperation which suggests his control was slipping.’

‘There are three versions of Richard that exist. There is the traditional Ruthless Richard, who plots for the throne perhaps from before his brother’s death and kills those who get in his way. A Romantic Richard is viewed as a victim of the events of 1483, dragged to his own doom by a sense of duty. The final persona is a Reactive Richard, lurching from one enforced decision to the next as crises swallow him.’

‘And while I was talking, the idea of actually losing Peeta hit me again and I realised how much I don’t want him to die. And it’s not about the sponsors. And it’s not about what will happen back home. And it’s not just that I don’t want to be alone. It’s him. I do not want to lose the boy with the bread.’

Robin getting drunk with John of Gaunt after trying whiskey for the first time is the best thing ever.

This certainly ties up a lot of loose ends from both the TV show and the other audio dramas! Wouldn’t make a lot of sense without watching all of those first though.

‘Whatever may be guessed, the suggestion in Richard’s letter that George’s death had been contrary to his own wishes is clear. How he might have rationalised this and expected Edward to continue to indulge George’s treachery is hard to imagine. Richard and George seem to have been close, whatever disputes they took up against each other, and it seems reasonable that Richard would not be happy‘

‘Stay at home and stay safe.’
Now that sounds familiar.

Seems the right time to listen to this

I love Gwen and Rhys, they are hilarious and so like a real couple

‘They were blessed with a son, named Edward for his uncle, perhaps another signal of the esteem in which Richard still held his brother. Born at Middleham Castle, he was known as Edward of Middleham, but even the year in which he was born is not recorded... when something as fundamental as his year of birth cannot be known, the hopes of finding the real boy in the fog of history are all but lost.’

Learning something new again. Some of the workers who were soldering suffered from Monday Morning Fever. This is a reaction to the fumes they have breathed in while working, with people building up a tolerance during the week and that lasting them through the weekend, before feeling awful on the Monday. How awful working conditions were back then.

I love the fact this bookshop was real and offered the public a way to access books, through borrowing, events etc

Audiobook version (not on here).

I do love these books, easy reading yet learn a lot I didn’t already know. Mainly about the black shirts and their rallies/battles before World War II started. How awful.

And it is so obvious who Ruby should choose/end up with.

‘One of the greatest disappointments for Richard as the condition began to manifest itself would have been the loss of any hope that he would become a physical match for his oldest brother... For a small boy, it must have seemed that Edward was an heroic figure from Grecian myth and Richard could have harboured a legitimate hope of reaching the same striking stature and prowess as the king.‘