BOOK REVIEW:Geo Martin's 5th vol "A Dance with Dragons" in his Song of Ice and Fire series:
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/07/winter-is-almost-upon-us-george-rr-martins-a-dance-with-dragons-spoiler-free
Viewers offer variety of the Game of Thrones musical theme:
http://blogs.tv3.cat/seriesenblog.php?itemid=41124#more My fav..
POLL:What Color is Your Psyche?...answer the blogthing survey and enter your psyche color in latest poll...
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Showtime sold the rights to The Tudors to the BBC, but they retain their website--filled with great background material. Chas Brandon ages well ;) Here he is in the final series..details on all 4 available..
http://www.sho.com/site/tudors/cast.do?name=henry_cavill
Spooks & The Tudors merge....
BLOOPERS - happens to the best of ‘em :)
Still some activity at the Tudorswiki.
http://tudorswiki.sho.com/page/SITEMAP+of+the+Tudors+Wiki
There are several stunningly beautiful landscape scenes in each series - unfortunately, unless you're watching the dvds, only indoor pix are available. Interior sets/cinematography are almost equally as gorgeous as the outdoors...sumptuous costumes, candle-lit court revelries/chapels/ *love* scenes scorching hot enough to provide central heating for the entire palace.. (the latter are a bit overdone at times--the story is compelling enough without needing to flash detailed anatomy lessons every other scene:) *that said---just might need to re-watch several in the Chas Brandon classroom..giggle*
Writer Hirst said the Brandon character was used as the conscience of the piece. Guilt did manage to penetrate his emotional armor, unlike he life-long friend Henry VIII..
Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, escorts Anne of Cleeves. Historical records show that her betrothed, HenryVIII, said she was horse-faced. Might've been true of the authentic female but certainly not an accurate description of the actress chosen to play her in the series. The character gave the impression of being an innocent, naive young woman who was ill equipped (that's a compliment:) to deal with the aging king's personal demands.
This is not Anne of Cleves,,,hmmm, doesn't appear to be Anne Boleyn either(she's dark haired)..obviously, you can't keep track of Henry's amorous adventures without a SCOREcard *teehee*
EXCERPT: 'Albion's Seed' by historian David Hackett Fischer, pub 1989..p.445
"THE QUAKER GALILEE": England's North Midlands
These emigrants [to colonial America] came not from North Midlands in general, but mainly from the Pennine moors and uplands which ran in a northerly way from the Peak District of Derbyshire to the Fells of Yorkshire and Cumbria. This was the highest ground in England. It encompassed the six counties of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Lancashire, east Cheshire, west Yorkshire and southern Westmorland. The Pennine Moors are Bronte country. Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre were set in the West Riding of Yorkshire, where Charlotte, Anne and Emily Bronte had grown up in the village of Haworth. Their writings are uncertain guides to the culture of dissent in this region, but powerful evocations of its climate and terrain.
Later in the modern era, this area became the industrial heartland of Britain...
This region shared a common culture condition, and also a common history. The North Midlands more than any other part of England, had been colonized by Viking invaders. Historian Hugh Barbour writes, "...in the central region of the North, the Pennine moorland, where Quakerism was strongest, the villages were mainly Norse in origin and name, and Norse had been spoken there in the Middle Ages. From the Norsemen came the custom of moots, or assemblies in the open at a standing-stone or hilltop grave, which may have influenced the Quakers' love for such meeting places. The Norse custom was individual ownership of houses and fields; the Norman system of feudal manors imposed in the 12thC was always resented."
The Norman conquest of the north had been particularly brutal, and had left a region bitterly divided against itself. Its governing families were culturally distinct from the governed, and long remembered their Norman-French origins. Many remained Roman Catholic more than a century after Henry VIII broke with the Pope. In the 17thC many of this elite became Royalist. But shepherds and farmers of the north thought of themselves as a race apart from their overlords. Their religion was evangelical and Protestant. They felt themselves to be aliens from the schools and churches and courts and political institutions of the region---all of which remained securely in the hands of the ruling few. This attitude entered into the theology of the Quakers, and profoundly shaped their social purposes. In some respects, the Quaker culture was that of its native region; in others it was a reaction against it.
...This was the region where the Quakers first appeared. It long remained their strongest base. The founder, George Fox(1624-91), was a Leicestershire weaver's son who developed his doctrine of the Inner Light by 1646 and made his early converts mostly in the North Midlands. By the year 1654, 85% of Quaker meetings were in the northern counties of England.
THE FRIENDS MIGRATION: Regional Origins
The Quaker founders of Pennsylvania and West Jersey came from every part of England. But one English region stook out above the rest...The Friends migration drew especially from the counties of Cheshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire, DBY, Notts. In one list of English immigrants who arrived at Philadelphia between the years 1682 and 1687, more than 80% came from these 5 contiguous counties...The same pattern also appeared among immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania's Bucks County before 1687.[named by Wm Penn after his family's Buckinghamshire UK roots] 2/3 came from counties of Yorks, Lancs, Cheshire, DBY, Notts and Staffordshire...A sizeable number also came from English settlements in Ireland.
Wm Penn was often reprimanded by other English gentlemen for mixing with Quakers. In 1671 Sir John Robinson told him "I vow Mr. Penn I am sorry for you. Your are an ingenious gentleman, all the world must...allow you that, and you have a plentiful estate. Why should you render yourself unhappy by associating with such a simple people?"
To this complaint, Penn answered that he favored "honestly simple" people above the "ingeniously wicked." In the Friends' migration, he found the company that he preferred to keep.
That said...the writer goes on to state that within the first generation of settlement was a small core of Philadelphia Quaker families - 85% were related to one another.
The Dilworth, Waln, Pemberton, Harris and Morris families all hailed from Lancashire. The Sharplesses, Janneys, Simcocks, Stanfields and Brasseys were from Cheshire. The Matlocks, Buntings and Bartrams came from Derbyshire, the Yardlys and Rudyards from Staffordshire; Hopkinsons from Nottinghamshire; Holmeses from Yorkshire; Whartons from Westmorland; Kirkbrides from Cumberland; and Fenwicks from Northumberland.
There were Buckinghamshire connections related to Penn himself.
Yet another group consisted of Quakers from Wales---David Lloyd and his rival kinsman Thos Lloyd, and also the Jones, Owen, Meredith, Cadwalader and Painter families.
...The Norrises from London by way of Jamaica, the Carpenters from Sussex by way of Barbados, the Dickinsons from Jamaica and the Rawles family from Cornwall. In the New World they were joined by German and Dutch Quakers.
In Bucks County there was a Quaker connection headed by Jeremiah Langhorne...all came to be connected in a great cousinage with Philadelphia families: Reads, Logans, Prestons, Smiths, Powels, Morrises, Shoemakers, Lloyds, Carpenters, Cadwaladers.
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Fastforward from Henry VIII to a truer heart in the form of RA's Claude Monet and his beautiful painting 'Saint Lazare Train Station'...
