Charlie Fenton > Recent Status Updates

‘Keep your eyes clear. Remember he is a king first and a man second. This is where Anne went wrong. She began to think he was only a man.’

This one is like a horror movie

I already know this is going to be one of my favourites, at least my favourite so far. This ties up so many loose ends and answers so many questions I had from the main TV series. Ianto seemed to get over Lisa so quickly in that, but this really does delve into his mindset during the months following, as well as show the impact of the Countrycide episode too.

‘Not prayer nor Bible verse, nor scholarship nor wit, nor grant under seal nor statute law can alter the fact of villain blood. Not all his craft and guile can make him a Howard, or a Cheney or a Fitzwilliam, a Stanley or even a Seymour: not even in an emergency.’

‘Such, then, was the measure of the ‘fumes and displeasures’ between England’s proudest nobleman and the realm’s haughtiest churchman. For all their visibility they were plainly, by and large, the stuff of peevish banter rather than mortal enmity, and when Buckingham’s end came, it was the king and not his cardinal who willed it.’

The second part is definitely better. Not that I didn’t enjoy the first, but it is good to get past the events of Pride and Prejudice.

Mary reminds me a lot of Edith in Downton Abbey, I feel really sorry for her.

Wow. Just... wow.

Now that was a twist! I do love Andy though, he is so underrated.

Bought so many in the sale (I mean 50% off!) so going through a few now, as I’m sure people have noticed.

‘Forty-five years on this earth, twenty-seven of them as King of England - and all he has to show for it are three bastard children, one of them now a corpse.’

Have to say the index is completely wrong, no mention of Stephen Gardiner on any of the pages cited, which is annoying

‘One had to traverse three rooms, we are told by a foreign ambassador, before the inner closet could be reached where Wolsey beavered away. And any chatterers or dalliers who might eventually pierce this protective cordon were invariably given short shrift, for at this time more than ever the man at the centre of things was exasperated by any talk divorced from action.’

And now there is the plague and people having to keep their distance, sounds oddly familiar...

I forgot how much I loved these books. The narration is excellent and I love all the background noises and just the general atmosphere, it really transports you to a different time.

“Thomas, I see it is not an easy thing to do, to show an innocent girl that the world is not as she thinks. The late Katherine never let the child hear a word in dispraise of her father. Everything was the fault of the cardinal, or his council, or his concubine. Nothing was the fault of Henry. Naturally she expected to be embraced, without question, once Anne Boleyn was dead.”

‘But early in 1509, at the king’s personal prompting, a perk of an altogether higher order now came his way. It was on 2 February - the last feast of Candlemas that he would witness - that Henry VII saw fit to make Wolsey Dean of the cathedral church of Lincoln, and six days afterwards, the almoner was presented with a prebend in the same cathedral.’

‘Henry likes to utter his sin and be forgiven. He is sincerely sorry, he will not do it again. And in this case perhaps he will not. The temptation to cut off your wife’s head does not arise every year.’

‘the examination which led to the award of a bachelor’s degree was both elaborate and exacting. Under the supervision of a Master of Arts, Wolsey was made to stand before a desk for at least seven days between nine o’clock and twelve in the morning and from one o’clock until five in the afternoon. His task, quite simply, was to defend a formidable range of propositions against all corners’

Been years since I read this book

‘Incest is a sin, we all acknowledge; but then so is congress in any position other than the one approved by priests. So is congress on a Friday, the day of Christ’s crucifixion; or on Sundays, Saturdays and Wednesdays. If you listen to churchmen, it’s a sin to penetrate a woman during Lent and Advent... More than half the year is accursed, one way and another. It’s a wonder anyone is ever born.’

The illustrations in this book are just stunning

‘Don’t be deceived. Uncle Norfolk is not our comrade or our ally or our friend. He is slapping us to appraise how solid we are. He is eyeing the Cromwell bull-neck. He is wondering what sort of blade you’d need, to slice through that.’

‘She ate like only a queen could, ignoring the people who told her what to do or suggested that women shouldn’t have large appetites, retaining control over that one element even as she lost control of her children, or her ladies, and as the balance of power between monarch and Parliament shifted decisively away from her.’

‘A well-run Victorian kitchen garden was a very fine thing. It could be relied upon to produce any vegetable or fruit at any point in the year, drawing on a mixture of techniques to force (bring forward) or retard flowering and fruiting throughout the year. Many large gardens had coal-fired boiler houses, which fed hot air into the garden walls, and hot steam into greenhouses.’

‘It was remarkable to me that so few people were missing, given the scale of the Blitz. The authorities made great efforts to identify everyone who was killed in the bombing, by scraps of clothing, effects and witness accounts. In most cases it was known that someone had been in a particular place when it was bombed and it could be assumed that they died there’

‘The master cooks were at risk as well. They were most likely to spend time preparing delicate French-style sauces over badly ventilated charcoal chafing stoves. Respiratory failure due to carbon monoxide inhalation was a common problem among cooks, especially those in upper-class kitchens, which demanded lots of French sauces cooked on a charcoal stove’

‘By 1837 it had become virtually impossible to get anything done. Examples of confusion included window mending: a broken kitchen window required a requisition signed by the chief cook, countersigned by a clerk of the kitchen, signed by the master of the Household, and then authorised by the Lord Chamberlain’s Office before being passed to the Department of Woods and Forests for the actual work to be scheduled‘

‘Cooking at the palace may have looked prestigious and interesting, but this was by no means finely tuned cheffing for a select group of discerning diners. It was mass catering on a factory scale. In March 1865 alone, 8,257 people ate a food cooked by the royal chefs, and this was a fairly typical monthly figure.’

’At breakfast, everyone in the restaurant was sombre and upset. We Londoners knew that other towns were being bombed, some very badly, but London was bearing the brunt of German attacks and London could take it. It seemed ‘unsporting’ to so devastate a small town such as Coventry.’