The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Monarchs Anonymous is a fun, frenetic show that should appeal to a variety of ages. The premise is a therapy session involving multiple monarchs. The figures taking part are Marie Antionette, Mansa Musa, Charles II, Henry VIII and Princess Sophia Duleep Singh....
Hello Steven – thanks for talking to us a few years on from the publication of The Wisest Fool: The Lavish Life of James VI and I, our Book Club pick for June. In the book, you set out to strip away the myths around the first Stuart King of England – what was the...
In a secular age, religious history can feel slightly tangential and recondite, particularly when set against the commercial and colonial designs of fledgling empires in the early modern age. Very well, except that is missing the point. Reformation Europe remains a...
In April 1521, three famous subjects of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V were risking their lives on three different continents. Martin Luther was standing before the emperor in person at the Diet of Worms, where he defied all the powers of Europe in the name of...
Dr. Steven Parissien’s latest retelling of history through architecture, Building Britannia: A History of Britain in Twenty-Five Buildings, begins with Maiden Castle in Dorset, which dates from around 600 BC. In the words of John Cooper Powys, this resembles ‘the...
Welcome, Steven, to Aspects of History. What was it that first led you into the study of architecture and cultural history? Which came first? I was always fascinated by British history and British architecture from my earliest years, though I’m not sure why: no-one in...
Whether you are interested in being introduced to British history, or you are familiar with it, Willie, Willie, Harry, Stee, will prove to be a find. Borne out of a successful podcast of the same name, Charlie Higson has written a book which entertains and educates in...
When writing my second Alexander Baxby mystery Naming the Dead, I tried to imagine what life was like for ordinary people in the early seventeenth century. A murder-solving physician such as Baxby would have witnessed much suffering and death. Average life expectancy...
Lincolnshire has played a pivotal role in the history of England on more than one occasion with the Rising of 1536 being one such example which was itself a precursor to the larger Pilgrimage of Grace. Just over a century later, the county would again play an...
