Elizabethan England
Game of Queens
Several years ago, historian Sarah Gristwood’s Blood Sisters held me enrapt. She described the well-known events of the Wars of the Roses and the rise of the Tudor dynasty through the lives of the Plantagenet women. It was women’s history at its best* in that it not only told the story of often forgotten or…
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The Day(s) The Music Died
If you’ve been hanging out in English-speaking corners of the internet, you are doubtless aware that April 23, 2016 is the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death. (In one of those weird little coincidences that historians and poets love, he may well have been born on the same date 52 years earlier since he was…
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The Last Armada
A Spanish invasion force, already crippled by punishing storms that had separated it from most of its troops and supplies, landed at the Irish harbor of Kinsale on September 21, 1601. The Spanish troops intended to battle their way through Ireland with the support of a population that Irish expatriates assured them was eager to…
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