History Links: Oh No You DIDN’T
The Guardian has a truly stupid article about Richard III’s bones showing a likelihood that the Queen is not descended from Edward III, which ignores the fact that so many cousins married each other in medieval England that even if one of the Queen’s ancestors was not an Edward III descendant, probably half a dozen more WERE. Also it gets the name of Richard III’s son wrong (he was Edward, not Richard), which doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in it. ARG. (This BBC article on the same subject is much better.)
Someone has returned a copy of Gone with the Wind to a high school library- 65 years late. I just love people returning insanely overdue library books.
A great place to read your massive backlog of history books: 17 Cosy Reading Nooks. I especially like numbers 13-15.
Dictators, it turns out, are weird about food in addition to being hideously evil human beings. Stalin loved picnics, apparently.
PBS has new BBC programming coming later this month! I am especially excited about Tales from the Royal Bedchamber– I follow host Lucy Worsley, who is Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, on Twitter and her programs sound really interesting. (PS- How do you get THAT job???)
Winston Churchill’s predictions about life in the 1980’s are actually pretty good.
See Princess Anne talk about Magna Carta.
The Toast talks about the White Ship disaster and it’s AMAZING.
And finally, I totally wish I lived closer to the British Museum (the same continent would be a good start), and their Ming Dynasty exhibit looks great, but I would be lying if I said I was talking about it for any reason other than the following picture:
YES PLEASE.
Reign of Terrible 