I hope your weekend has been as fun filled and joyous as mine. I managed to tick two things off the Tudor bucket list this Sunday. Let me tell you what they are and how I did them.
This Sunday I attended the Battle of Bosworth Medieval Heritage Festival at Bosworth Market in the UK. For those of you that don't know this is the battle where Henry VII (Henry VIII's daddy) won his throne through right of conquest off of Richard III (the king under the car park, and hide and seek champion). The festival itself sadly doesn't take place on the actual field the battle is fought on, as that is currently a working farm, but at the Bosworth Hertitage Centre close to where the battle was actually fought. The festival itself is fundamentally a recreation of the battle of Bosworth - it's the second year I have visited this festival and it is well worth attending. They also have lots of market stalls with traders offering their wares, games for all the family, a living history camp with various presentations, jousting and feats of arms by Destrier (a jousting group - check them out!), which all work alongside their heritage centre.
Battle recreation - The yorkists under their King Richard III line up ready for battle.
Throughout the day the festival had arranged for Phillipa Langley MBE and Leanda De Lisle, author and historian to give educational talks. Phillipa's talk (which I sadly didn't get to go on as it was sold out) was about her new project on the missing princes in the Tower, and Leanda's was on The Tudors a family story (based on her book), which informed you of how the Tudors came to power throughout this turbulent period of history. We managed to get tickets to Leanda's talk, and it was great. It was so well researched and she showed the audience many images, which I have never seen before relating to this period. Afterwards, she was doing a book signing, and as I had brought one of her books earlier (I had the other one they were selling already at home), I got in the queue ready for her to sign my book.
Me in line, my mum was saying something to me at the time I couldn't quite hear - hence my face!
So I waited patiently and finally it was my turn to meet her and for her to sign my book. All I can say is she is so lovely! She was more than happy to talk to those who had come to see her, and it didn't seem any trouble to her to have her photo taken. She also told me that Phillipa Gregory had based her book on the book I had just asked her to sign.
And here she is... huzzah! A photo where I haven't accidentally pulled a face or squinted - result!
After this, I left Leanda to meet the rest of her adoring fans, to go and watch the jousting by Destrier, which was based in the main arena. On the way, however I paused (okay, and jumped up and down a lot in excitement - granted) before grabbing my mums arm, and then pointing over in the direction of the huts. Stood in front of them was none other that Dominic Smee!
If you don't know Dominic Smee, where have you been?!?! Dom has the same curvature of the spine as Richard III, and following the dig for Richard was provided with armour specially made for his body so that he could carry out athletic-based tests to see how his body performed with this slight disability, and whether they could even get armour on somebody with scoliosis. Turns out you can, and it's didn't put him at a great disadvantage as many were to have believed. I have attached a link below to a short clip of Dom talking about how his life has changed since he helped scientists with these tests.
So, I plucked up the courage, ran over and asked him for a photo. Thankfully, he said yes, and I said to him ''I bet you get this all the time'', to which he said ''yes'' and then chuckled a little.
Me and Dominic Smee...
After, this I thanked him and then we had to run off for the jousting. I was on a high and then the sombre part of the day came round - the battle reenactment. I'm not really a teary person, but last year when they carried Richard off on the horse, and then Henry VII was given the crown I was fighting back the tears a little - and this year was no different. I guess it's just because I have spent many years following, and researching things to do with the Tudor period, but this is where it truly began.
In all I had a wonderful day, and was so fortunate to be able to tick two things off of my Tudor Bucket List. I even ran into my friend Catherine Brooks (who works for The Tudor Society and Made Global Publishing), her partner David Ibbotson and their wonderful son Lukas.
