ScruntyBeggar

Walking along the grubby, commercialised waterfront of the Thames, it's difficult to imagine what this shore looked like the day before the first bridge spanned the river. Equally, had one been sitting in a boat in the shallows that made up the river's margin on that day, it would have been as impossible to imagine the scale of this colossal concrete and glass city, so seemingly permanent, in what would then have been tidal river flats with hills rising green behind. Which puts me in mind of medieval re-enactment and what it is that re-enactors actually do. We cannot "be" the people of the late 15th century. Our intellects are too overlaid w

Richard's Grave. "I Richard's body have interred anew; And on it have bestow'd more contrite tears Than from it issued forced drops of blood: Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay, Who twice a-day their wither'd hands hold up Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests Sing still for Richard's soul."   Henry V, Act 4 Sc I Well, Henry Twydr didn't go quite as far as his Lancastrian predecessor Henry V! Two chantries and five hundred poor praying twice a day would have been nice, but at least he commissioned a monument maker to build an alabaster memorial over Richard's grave. (1)

Two Elizabeths: Pictures in the National Portrait Gallery, London. One of the great things about riding a bike to work in London, is that at lunch time I can nip down to the nation's galleries for an hour's contemplation. And what a delight this week. The National Portrait Gallery – that great repository of images of Britons past and present – has on display, two Elizabeths. Now, being a Richardian and thereby a staunch Yorkist, I am no lover of the Tudors, but there is fascination in the way the they used propaganda. And in the Elizabethan era, although images of the queen were painted to project political messages about the reig