This is a work of fiction, but the images referred to all exist as did all the characters and the executions to which they refer. Like other writers of historical fiction, I have taken events as my skeleton and dressed it with the clothes of a possible event, placing imagined words into the mouths of… Continue reading Another Execution! – MV Taylor
Recently I was contacted by Susan Abernathy suggesting I might be able to help the owner of this painting who has owned the panel for the past thirty odd years and is still none the wiser as to who painted it, what it commemorates, who is portrayed and where it has been until it was… Continue reading Solve the puzzle of this 16th century painting for a £5,000 reward!
The face of Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), faithful servant of Henry VIII first as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster from 1525-1529, then as Lord Chancellor from 1529-1532, is known to us because Hans Holbein the Younger (c1497-1543) painted the portrait that now hangs in the Frick Collection, New York. Sir Thomas More as Chancellor… Continue reading Sir Thomas More – how we know him & his family
Nicholas Hilliard was England’s first English artist to become internationally famous. His self portrait (© Victoria & Albert Museum, London) is a mere 41mm in diameter (1.6 inches) and it is for these exquisitely delicate and miniature images of Elizabeth I and her court that he becomes famous. I fell in love with Hilliard’s miniatures… Continue reading Nicholas Hilliard (1547-1619) & Isaac Oliver (1565-1617): Painters to the Elizabethan and Jacobean courts
Some years ago I was asked to mentor a new researcher into Tudor history, Heather Darsie, who was researching a new biography of Anna, Duchess of Cleves - Henry VIII's fourth wife. You would have thought that over the years the various historians specialising in Tudor history had drained this particular pot dry. However, this… Continue reading Anna, Duchess of Cleves: The King’s Beloved Sister
