* To see or not to see? Shakespeare’s death mask on display for the first time in macabre exhibition of medical artefacts – Anyone know anything about the authenticity of the Shakespeare death mask?

* Henry VIII as King David – From the British Library’s Manuscripts blog

And a neat trailer for Nancy Bilyeau’s The Crown:

Books

* Nancy Bilyeau’s debut novel The Crown is now out in the US and will be out next month in the UK. Stay tuned for a guest post from Nancy soon!

* Kelly Hart’s Jane Seymour is out February 1 in the US and UK, but I haven’t heard much about this one.

* Our Man in Rome by Catherine Fletcher is about Henry VIII’s representative to the Pope during the Divorce. It is out February 2 in the UK and comes out in the US under the title The Divorce of Henry VIII: The Untold Story from Inside the Vatican on June 19.

Festival

Peterborough Cathedral’s annual Katharine of Aragon Festival will run January 27 to 29 this year. More information is available on their webpage for the festival. (Note, the graphic on the page currently has last year’s dates, but if you download the program it has the correct information.)

Edited 1-18-12: I corrected the info on Our Man in Rome: Henry VIII and his Italian Ambassador – I mistakenly thought that there were two separate books coming out, when in fact there were two titles for the same book. I get fooled by that occasionally!

* Bloody Tales of the Tower – Presented by Suzannah Lipscomb and Joe Crowley for National Geographic. Now *this* one I am unreservedly looking forward to!

* US publication of sequel to Mantel’s award-winning ‘Wolf Hall’ moved from November to May

* BlancheParry.com has a calendar out for 2012, with proceeds once again going to Bacton Church, Herefordshire

* Historic Knole House in Sevenoaks may be forced to close to public – More information on the fund raising appeal here

Another neat video from the Historic Royal Palaces You Tube channel:

And a video about symbols in Holbein’s The Ambassadors You Tube channel from the National Gallery (check back through the uploads for more on this painting and others by Holbein, as well as other great art!):

* Unrequited Love? 16th-Century Erotic Poem Discovered – Nearly 450 years ago, when England was tearing itself apart over religion, a Catholic woman named Lady Elizabeth Dacre wrote an elegant but at times erotic Latin love poem to Sir Anthony Cooke, a Protestant and tutor to King Edward VI, the successor of Henry VIII. (Suzannah Lipscomb had a short article about this in the Times, but unfortunately it is behind a paywall. If anyone has more info from that article, please post it in the comments!)

* Rival Queens, Precious Books – From the British Library’s Manuscripts blog, links to two new additions to their digitized collection: Lady Jane Grey’s Prayer Book and The Queen Mary Psalter.

* On the Tudor Trail: Winners of our Tudor Ghost Story Contest! – Congrats to winner Lisa Tecoulesco and runner-up Katherine Marcella!

* And a new blog discovery: Art History News by Bendor Grosvenor. After a discussion about the Holbein drawing of Anne Boleyn on Twitter (mentioned in the post), Grosvenor posted about his research into its identification in 2006. See Anne Boleyn regains her head for all the details. See also Most Tudor stuff for a transcription of the inventory of Kathryn Howard’s jewels and how it relates to the Holbein miniature.

* In a follow-up to last week, the portrait of Catherine of Aragon up for auction at Christie’s ended up selling for £151,250 (about £100,000 over the initial estimate!) and the portrait of Katherine Parr sold for £27,500, about twice the estimate.

* History Today has announced the shortlist of the Longman-History Today Book award and among the finalists is Thomas Penn’s work on Henry VII, Winter King: The Dawn of Tudor England

* The UK Parliament Archives twitter account linked to a page about the King’s Seat in Westminster Hall, which led me to poke around the rest of their pages on the building. I’ve been fascinated by Westminster Hall for a long time, since it is the only large surviving piece of the Palace of Westminster, which dates back to 1097 (William II) and was the place of several events in Tudor history. Be sure to look at the videos from the virtual tour!

* Chatham dig finds Tudor dockyard remains

* Novel Approaches: From Academic History to Historical Fiction – The IHR had their first virtual conference on this topic and you can see all the presentations at the website.

And finally…

* If you have a few spare tens of thousands of pounds, you can bid on some late 16th century (or later) portraits of Catherine of Aragon and Katherine Parr on auction next week at Christie’s. And if you have a few spare MILLION – you can bid on some of Elizabeth Taylor’s jewelry, including La Peregrina, a pearl given to Mary I by her husband Philip of Spain. Many centuries later it was given to Taylor by her husband Richard Burton (who played Henry VIII in Anne of the Thousand Days).

The first bit of news was that the name of the sequel has been changed to Bring Up the Bodies and the previously announced title The Mirror and the Light (that I blogged about here) will be used for the third book. Somewhere in the back of my mind I thought that she had at least hinted that her Cromwell books might end up as a trilogy and now it seems to be the case.

News articles:
Hilary Mantel writes second sequel to Wolf Hall
Hilary Mantel novel Wolf Hall will be part of a trilogy
Hilary Mantel reveals plans for Wolf Hall trilogy

And the other interesting piece of news – which isn’t really all that surprising given the success of The Tudors – HBO and the BBC are developing a mini-series based on Wolf Hall! I’m pretty optimistic that they’ll do a really good job of this although the plans are for four episodes which will mean a lot will have to be cut from the book.

News articles:
BBC and HBO line up Wolf Hall drama
HBO And BBC Developing Miniseries Based On Wolf Hall
BBC, HBO Team for ‘Wolf Hall’ Miniseries

* FiveBooks Interviews > Thomas Penn on Henry VII – Another great interview from The Browser (and thankfully I already have three of the books he recommended, so I didn’t have to add too many things to my wishlist)

* Volunteers for the 2012 Season – Sudeley Castle is looking for help with some upcoming projects including the celebration of the 500th anniversary of Katherine Parr’s birth

* Rare tankard finally returns to Glastonbury Abbey – “A rare carved oak tankard, said to have been saved from King Henry VIII’s looters during the Dissolution of the Monasteries is to be returned to Glastonbury Abbey for the first time in 125 years.”

Books

* I have conflicting information on a new work on Catherine of Aragon by Patrick Williams… some have it out this past week, but it looks like June 1 of next year is the official release date. If anyone knows more, please let me know.

* A new work by Eric Ives entitled The Reformation Experience is out November 18 in the UK and August 1, 2012 in the US:

* Philip of Spain, King of England: The Forgotten Sovereign by Harry Kelsey will be released November 30 in the UK and January 31, 2012 in the US. I’m looking forward to this one since I don’t know a whole lot about Philip’s time as King consort to Mary I.

Exhibitions

* As I posted about yesterday, the British Library’s Royal Manuscripts exhibition opens November 11 and runs through March 13, 2012. Among the works exhibited will be Henry VIII’s Psalter and the Hours of Elizabeth the Queen (a work owned by, but not created for, Elizabeth of York).

The British Library’s next major exhibition Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination opens November 11, 2011 and runs through March 13, 2012.

I was originally planning to just mention this in my next round-up of upcoming books and exhibitions, but since I had collected several links about it, I thought it deserved a post of its own.

Although the opening is a few weeks away, the British Library has already been posting about the exhibition for a few months on their Digitised Manuscripts blog and have added a bunch of images to their Facebook page. They also have launched an app for tablets and smart phones with some information and zoomable images from the exhibition. I bought the iPad version and it’s lovely! And, if you’re in the area, they will have a two-day conference on December 12 and 13.

If anyone makes it to the exhibition or conference and does a write-up, let me know!