We all know Richard Armitage as an actor from programmes such as “North and South”, “Robin Hood” and “Spooks”. Some of us also have heard before of his great interest in Richard III and making a film about him.
Now you can do your bit to make this come true. Go to the King Richard Armitage website and sign the petition to encourage potential financiers and production investors to support the “Richard III” project.
There is also an interview with our branch member and former chairperson, acclaimed novelist Isolde Martyn on the site.
Liverpool stages an annual Shakespeare Festival. This year (25 August to 10 September) the Lodestar Theatre Company is presenting Romeo and Juliet at St. George’s Hall, Liverpool. This play was chosen to show the “tragic consequences of a city’s troubles and divisions” and is set in 19th century Liverpool. Considering the recent events in various UK cities, including Liverpool, Shakespeare’s play is even more apt than the organisers could have imagined when they decided on its production.
On the last night of the festival, 11 September, there will be a special performance: 25 theatre companies from around the country will each prepare a randomly selected scene from Richard III in the style of their choice. These scenes are then brought together in one performance. According to the official announcement there will be “100 terrified performers. 3 evil judges. Not a single rehearsal.” No wonder that the organisers call it “Shakespeare with no holds Bard.”
Each of the participating companies will be bringing a different style and technique to the play with the aim to “celebrate the diversity of approach both here and nationally.”
The variety of different perceptions of Shakespeare’s play Richard III is appropriate also when we regard the variety of perceptions of the historical man, from saint to absolute villain and anything in between.
Sources:
Official page of the Liverpool Shakespeare Festival 2011: http://www.liverpoolshakespearefestival.com/#!richard-iii Date accessed: 2 September 2011
Tina Miles, ‘Merseyside theatregoers set to raise money for ECHO charity Liverpool Unites’, Liverpool Echo (31 August 2011). URL: http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/2011/08/31/merseyside-theatregoers-set-to-raise-money-for-echo-charity-liverpool-unites-100252-29332122/ Date accessed: 1 September 2011
‘Liverpool Shakespeare Festival’, My Echo – Liverpool Unites. URL: http://myecho.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-shakespeare-festival/ Date accessed: 2 September 2011
Posted by: Dorothea Preis
As the emblem of Richard III was the white boar, anything on boars attracts my immediate attention. I also “like” the facebook page of my alma mater, the University of Bonn, and today this brought both interests together.
In the UK there have been no boars living wild for a long time, it is thought that the original British wild boar were probably extinct by the 13th century. There were attempts to re-introduce them, but even these became extinct during the 17th century. However, in 1998 two populations of wild boar were found to be living in Britain.
While the situation in the UK is rather dire for boars, it is anything but on the continent. In Germany they are thriving a little too well, so much so that they are regarded more as a pest. The latest incident was the one in Bonn, which I found mentioned on facebook. Read the rest of this entry »
Several friends brought a short clip on YouTube about Richard III to my attention and I would like thank all of them, not least the facebook page of the Richard III Society.
The clip is from the children’s TV show Horrible Histories, which is based on the books by Terry Deary. While Deary may be mainly known for his children’s books, he also presented the fascinating BBC programme on The Battle of Towton 1461, which is available on DVD with many extras from rkproductions.
Horrible Histories takes a rather unconventional look at history. The live-action TV series was first shown in 2009 on British CBBC Television and has been hugely successful, winning an array of awards. The last was in January this year, when it won best sketch at the Comedy Awards, the first children’s programme ever to do so.
In this clip Richard III puts the record straight in a song. Because “there’s a lot of people spreading nasty rumours about [him]” and because “the history books have been telling it wrong”, it’s now “time to tell the truth about King Richard the Third”. And certainly we all agree with his assessment that there was a “special ruler – King Richard the Third”, who was a “nice guy”.
Have a look at the clip of the ‘Richard III Song‘ and enjoy it. And if it helps getting the idea across that Richard was a real person and not the synonym for evil of the widespread misconception – well, that’s not so horrible, is it?
For more info on the TV series you may like to read an article published by The Guardian on 17 March 2011.
Helen Cox, the author of The Battle of Wakefield Revisited and Walk Wakefield 1460, attended the recent conference “Interpreting Battlefield Finds: Making the Most of Museums”. Here she tells us her experiences from this interesting conference. Thank you, Helen, for sharing this with us!
Conference Review: Interpreting Battlefield Finds: Making the Most of Museums
Royal Armouries, Leeds, Saturday 11th June 2011
Productive partnership was very much the theme of Interpreting Battlefield Finds: Making the Most of Museums, jointly run by the Leeds Royal Armouries and the Battlefields Trust.
Proceedings were opened by Dr. Jonathan Riley, Director General and Master of the Armouries, who welcomed delegates and paid tribute to the late Richard Holmes.
Alex Hildred, Curator of Ordnance for the Mary Rose Trust, then gave the first paper on ‘Interpretation of a Shipwreck Assemblage from the Battle of the Solent, 1545’. Finds from Henry VIII’s flagship, the Mary Rose, included 91 guns of varying size made from cast bronze, cast iron and wrought iron, complete with gun carriages, and thousands of stone, cast iron and lead projectiles. The Royal Armouries and Mary Rose Trust created working replicas of several types of gun, and undertook test firings to demonstrate the firepower of Tudor artillery. Armouries staff also identified a cartridge former and gunner’s rule (for checking cannonball sizes) in the assemblage – and, by recognising a maker’s mark, showed that Henry VIII’s army was using matchlock muskets imported from Gardone in Venice. The assemblage also contained more than 2000 arrows and 172 longbows – almost equalling the total number of firearms – indicating that archery was still important at this date. Archers could achieve a more rapid rate of fire and greater long-distance accuracy than musketeers, and longbows were a useful fall-back if gunpowder was spoiled at sea; however, within a few decades developments in firearm technology would render this traditional English weapon obsolete. Read the rest of this entry »
While I sit here writing this, it is just past 14h30 – that is here in Sydney, where – at least when it comes to time – we are ahead of most of the rest of the world. In about 9 hours, when it is 14h30 in the UK, a new walking trail will be officially opened at the Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre.
The new trail takes the recent discoveries about the actual site of the battle into consideration. It runs in a loop around Ambion Hill with views across the relocated battlefield at two points. Along the way there is information on the lead up to the battle, an introduction of the main protagonists for the casual sight-seer (Ricardians visit because of one of the protagonists) and an explanation of the events of 22 August 1485 including reconstructed images of what the battlefield may have looked like on the day.
This trail is the final element of developments at the battlefield funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. And of course we all voted for the Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre in the recent National Lottery Awards, though it seems that it did not make it to the finalists.
The new trail is open all year round and entry is free.
The opening of the new trail was announced on About My Area. You can find the results of the National Lottery Awards here.
Illustration of Richard III: © Andrew Jamieson, www.jamiesongallery.com
Ashfield, that active Sydney suburb, has just opened its brand-new state-of-the-art Library. To mark this spectacular addition one of the regular speakers at the “Authors at Ashfield” programme, David Millar came to give a talk on “The Medieval World of Geoffrey Chaucer”.
And after the extremely interesting articles on Chaucerian connections by Lesley Boatwright and Peter Hammond in the June 2011 Ricardian Bulletin, this was a talk that couldn’t be missed.
David is a well-loved speaker, blending his knowledge of travel, history and architecture to cover a multitude of subjects. On Wednesday, June 22, he travelled, like Chaucer’s pilgrims, to Canterbury and his photography showed us much of England’s green and pleasant land, the delightful town of Canterbury which has happily remained mainly untouched by too much development – although as he remarked when showing a picture of an old inn where Queen Elizabeth once slept (yes, another one!), she would have found it hard to understand the prominent banner-style notice about Espressos being available. Read the rest of this entry »
There has been much anticipation for a new production of Richard III at the Old Vic in London with Kevin Spacey in the title role. It is set to open on 29 June and I know that some of our Ricardian friends in the UK have got tickets to go and see it. Kevin Spacey has been the artistic director of the Old Vic Theatre Company since 2003.
The production will be directed by Sam Mendes, both Mendes and Spacey worked together on the 1999 movie American Beauty, for which they both won Oscars. It will be part of the Bridge Project, which has been a three-year US-British collaboration.
After the initial season in London, the production will tour the world – and will also come to Sydney, the only Australian city to be included. This will be the first production of the Old Vic Theatre Company to be staged in Australia since 1948, when Laurence Olivier brought also Richard III.
From 1 December there will be 11 performances at the Lyric Theatre. Tickets go on sale on 25 July.
Of course Shakespeare’s Richard III is a marvellous stage villain, but as my prof at Bonn uni all those years ago said “he does not seem to bear much resemblance to the real person”.
For more info on the stage production read the announcements in the Daily Telegraph, from Nine News as well as an older article from the Guardian. For more info on the relationship between play and reality have a look here.
Margaret (3 May 1446 – 23 November 1503) was the sister of Edward IV and Richard III. She married Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, in 1468. He died on 5 January 1477 and the dowager duchess remained influential in Burgundian politics until the end of her life.
Did Margaret like Chocolate? Hardly, chocolate hadn’t been introduced to Europe during her lifetime. A pity really, as today Belgian chocolates are world famous and as Duchess of Burgundy, Margaret would have been right on the spot.
Chocolate was only introduced into Europe after Hernan Cortes saw the Aztecs drink the beverage during his visit around 1519. In Belgium, chocolate was only produced on a large scale in the 19th century and what comes to mind when we hear the term ‘Belgian chocolates’ was only developed in the early 20th century. Read the rest of this entry »
The Battle of Bosworth on 22 August 1485 was fought between King Richard III and the invading army of Henry Tudor, ending with the death of Richard. Last year, an archaeological survey finally established the actual site of the battlefield, which on subsequent maps had moved further and further eastwards from its depiction on the earliest map (Saxton 1575).
For the visitor to Bosworth the interactive visitors’ centre is a must, showing information on the battle and its consequences. It also showcases the archaeological finds made during the survey, including the largest collection of 15th century cannonballs from any battlefield in Europe. You can walk the new Battle of Bosworth Trail around Ambion Hill, which also includes two interpreted views across the actual battlefield site. Read the rest of this entry »
