Monday 13 December 2010

UK History magazines - December

The BBC History magazine and 'History Today' both have some really good articles this month. 'History Today' has an article by Ian Mortimer entitled 'Barriers to the Truth', which once again has been written to support his excellent recent book, 'Medieval Intrigue'. He cites E H Carr's 'What is history?' for further reading, which takes me back to my university days. It was top of my history reading list for methodology.

The BBC History mag has published a letter in support of Ian Mortimer after that dreadful 'review' of 'Medieval Intrigue', which was nothing more than an attack on Ian's evidence for 'Medieval Intrigue' rather than a review of the book.

The BBC make also has a feature on Catherine of Aragon by Giles Tremlett, in conjunction with his new book on Catherine. The article is entitled 'Spain's Virgin Queen?' and focuses on the evidence used by the Spanish to prove Catherine's case that her marriage to Prince Arthur was unconsummated. The book is on my Christmas list, so I'll reserve judgment until I read it - but the article itself uses Spanish sources questioned years after Arthur's death, and likely to be as questionable as any Henry VIII produced to prove his case.

5 comments:

Kathryn Warner said...

I'm really glad someone responded to that awful 'review'!

Anerje said...

I'm just surprised it wasn't you:> J/K!

Kathryn Warner said...

Hehehehe! :-))

Gabriele Campbell said...

Lol.

I admit that sometimes when I read a particularly stupid Wikipedia article or find stirrups on Roman saddles in a TV documentry, my first urge is to go and correct the mess / write a letter, but when I think about it, life is too short to deal with idiots and someone will just re-edit the Wikipedia article and the letter to the TV channel will be ignored. So I don't bother.

I may write a blogpost about idiot researchers, though. ;)

Anerje said...

Hi Gabriele! Actually, someone also wrote a response about the article on the Tudors tv series, where one of the writers tried to defend some of the appalling (my word) 'history' in it. They quite rightly said these errors need pointing out otherwise people start to accept them. So send that e-mail next time!