King Arthur 2004 movie review

Posted on 7 Comments

The King Arthur 2004 movie is … uh … bad. I watched the whole thing and was entertained, but don’t think a single thing about it is historically accurate. King Arthur has been fodder for a hundred movies and will undoubtedly continue to be so. I truly wish that someone would come up with one where the history isn’t appalling. Ridley Scott is famous for acting as if there are no actual historical facts (see my review of Robin Hood), but the absurdity of the history Jerry Bruckheimer puts in this movie made me glad that my workout was only 30 minutes so I didn’t have to watch the whole thing at once. The Good: Is there anything good about this movie? Actually, the visuals are spectacular, and they obviously put a lot of money into making it. The acting is good, Read more…


Robin Hood (2010) movie review

Posted on 2 Comments

Since I’m a sap for anything medieval, I knew I would probably enjoy Ridley Scott’s, Robin Hood, even if his movies are generally too violent for my taste.  I have to say that I liked the movie more than I thought I would.  He refrained from his usual slo-mo blood spray as the hero kills another man (or dies himself), for which I was grateful.  In summary, the movie follows Robin from France, where he was in King Richard’s army on the way home from the Holy Land, to England, where he falls into an impersonation of the dead heir to the Locksley lands.   To be fair, Robin did impersonate the poor dead Sir Locksley initially, but he approached the dead man’s family on the up-and-up.  Meanwhile, John, now King John as Richard died in a final siege in France on Read more…


What is Mead?

Posted on 1 Comment

Although the nobility of Wales imported wine from the Roman period, and perhaps before, mead was the primary drink served throughout the country for thousands of years.  Because of the climate, grapes, many fruits, and even grains at times do not grow well in Wales, though wine production did (and does still) exist: “Wine has been made in England and Wales since Roman times. By the time of the Norman Conquest vines were grown in a number of vineyards, many of which were attached to monasteries. In fact the Domesday Book (1085-1086) records vineyards in 42 places. The main areas of production at this time were the coastal areas of the southeast, Somerset, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire. From the Middle Ages to the 20th century there was a decline in vineyards and the reasons cited for this have varied. They range from the Read more…


The Roman Conquest of Britain

Posted on Leave a comment

When the Romans invaded Britain in 43 AD, they crossed in three divisions, under the command of Aulus Plautius.  The ships are thought to have traveled from Boulogne to what is now Richborough, on the east coast of Kent. The Romans operated on a shock and awe type of warfare and eleven tribes of southeast Britain surrendered to Claudius.  The Romans moved west and north from there,  establishing their new capital at Camulodunum. It wasn’t until late in 47 AD that the new governor of Britain, Ostorius Scapula, began a campaign against the tribes of modern day Wales.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_conquest_of_Britain “The ever-pugnacious Caratacus – the Caradog of Welsh legend – moved north to carry on the fight in the territory of the Ordovices in Anglesey and Caernarfon. There, in 51AD, he was defeated and his family captured.” Later, the Silures defeated Read more…


Medieval Poisons

Posted on 23 Comments

King Henry I died of eating a surfeit of lampreys … but was it poison instead? King Henry I died in Normandy in 1135 of food poisoning “according to legend from eating a ‘surfeit of Lampreys’ (an eel type fish).”  http://www.britroyals.com/kings.asp?id=henry1 In the new mini-series on Starz “Pillars of the Earth” based on the book by Ken Follett, he was deliberately poisoned by King Stephen (who succeeded him) or someone working for him.  For those watching the show, in point of fact, King Henry did not die within moments of the birth of Maud’s son, Henry (born 5 March 1133), who ultimately succeeded Stephen as King of England, but two years later. King Henry died of food poisoning despite the high likelihood of having some kind of ‘food taster’.  Admittedly, such a person could be circumvented by a slow-acting poison.  Read more…


Height in the Middle Ages, or How Tall Are You?

Posted on 10 Comments

Determining height in the middle ages, and over time in general, is not easy, but we have some good data coming in of late that indicates the average height of people who lived in the 9-11th centuries in Britain was comparable to ours today. According to the report, “Mean Body Weight, Height, and Body Mass Index (BMI) 1960-2002: United States,” from the CDC (Center for Disease Control), the average height of a man aged 20-74 years increased from just over 5’ 8” in 1960 to 5’ 9 ½” in 2002.  At the same time, the average height for women increased from slightly over 5’ 3” in 1960 to 5’ 4” in 2002. If you visit houses built in the 18th century, however, door frames were much lower than they are now.  The obvious assumption, then, is that people were much Read more…


Literacy in the Middle Ages

Posted on 1 Comment

What it means to be literate is not an absolute standard even now.  This was even more true in the Middle Ages when the majority of the population couldn’t read at all, a certain percentage could read and not write, and the only way to be ‘literate’ at the time was if a person could read Latin.  Literacy in other languages didn’t count. Wales, as always, went its own way.  Taliesin, writing in the 6th century, wrote in Welsh.  His is the first of a long tradition of Welsh literature–in the Welsh language–outside the control of the Roman Church.  “The professionalism of the poetic tradition was sustained by a Guild of Poets, or Order of Bards, with its own “rule book” emphasizing the making of poetry as a craft. Under its rules poets undertook an apprenticeship of nine years to Read more…


Rushes on the Floor

Posted on 38 Comments

Everywhere in medieval life, you read about ‘rushes’ on the floor.  I, too, have had an issue with the notion of women in long gowns, walking around on loose rushes, whether or not they were sprinkled with herbs.  Wouldn’t it catch in the dress?   This page has this to say, and started off my inquiry: “I was completely fascinated to find this page of notes about real life for the upper classes in the Middle Ages, and it addresses one of the things I’ve always wondered about. In fact, I came upon it while specifically searching for information about rushes as floor covering. In this piece, the author rejects the idea of loosely strewn straw-like rushes (in rich households), because of the impracticality of the ladies of the house, with their sweeping gowns, navigating such domestic terrain. She opines that what Read more…


The Welsh/British High Council

Posted on Leave a comment

Within British (and by that I mean Welsh/Cymry/Celtic) legend, a High Council–a Parliament of a sort–existed in the Dark Ages to choose a “high king”.  One of these high kings, according to legend, was King Arthur.  Later, during Arthur’s reign, he instituted his ’round table’, a gathering of equals, to discuss the troubles in his realm.  Or so the story goes. But did this High Council ever exist? The answer is ‘yes’–certainly during the reign of the last Prince of Wales, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd.  In 1282 when Edward I of England wrote his letters to Llywelyn and Dafydd, demanding that they concede defeat, he also wrote a letter to the ‘Council of Wales’, laying out his case.  To this they responded: “The people of Snowdonia for their part state that even if the prince desired to give the king seisin Read more…


Ten years ago today …

Posted on 16 Comments

Ten years ago, on April 1, 2006, I wrote the first word of my first book. Sometimes it’s easy to pinpoint those moments in your life where everything changes.  When you look across the room and say to yourself, I’m going to marry him.  Or stare down at those two pink lines on the pregnancy test, when you’re only twenty-two and been married for a month and a half and are living on only $800 a month because you’re both still in school and my God how is this going to work? And sometimes it’s a bit harder to remember. Until I was eleven, my parents tell me they thought I was going to be a ‘hippy’.  I wandered through the trees, swamp, and fields of our 2 ½ acre lot, making up poetry and songs and singing them to Read more…


Jews in Medieval England

Posted on 3 Comments

Jews in Medieval England I’m updating this post, in large part because of a comment a reader left about my use of the word ‘pogrom’ in Footsteps in Time, having not heard the word before. A ‘pogrom’ is defined as: “An organized, often officially encouraged massacre or persecution of a minority group, especially one conducted against Jews.”  http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Pogrom Jews lived in England during the Roman and Anglo-Saxon periods, but not as an organized community. This page states:  “When William the Conqueror arrived in England in 1066, he encouraged Jewish merchants and artisans from northern France to move to England. The Jews came mostly from France with some from Germany, Italy and Spain, seeking prosperity and a haven from anti-Semitism. Serving as special representatives of the king, these Jews worked as moneylenders and coin dealers. Over the course of a generation, Read more…


The Last Pendragon Saga Updated!

Posted on Leave a comment

Good news for readers of The Last Pendragon Saga: I will be adding to the series later this year (for the 12 of you who’ve read the series so far :). If you have read the series (published previously as The Last Pendragon/The Pendragon’s Quest) you can stop reading this post now. For anyone who has not tried the series yet (demons and sidhe mixing it up in dark age Wales, so beware) as with The Lion of Wales series of novellas, I’ve made it more accessible as bite-sized pieces, rather than the tomes they were before. Thus … six novellas! And new covers! 99 cents to start or FREE for those of you who subscribe to Kindle Unlimited. http://amzn.to/20zrqcB