Another section of the Lord Leycester Hospital in Warwick. Photo May 1998

As I mentioned when I first posted about this place in Picture of the Week #86, it is on my “to visit again” list since I didn’t go inside when I was there 14 (!!) years ago. Well, it looks like that will probably happen next year since I’ve begun to seriously start researching and planning a trip for 2013. I won’t have any specific info until next year but getting back to Stratford, Warwick and Kenilworth is a definite part of the plans. Most of the rest of the trip, at this early planning stage, will concentrate on East Anglia, an area I haven’t visited at all on my previous three trips.

Now, on with this Sunday’s links:

* Hope Walker has posted the first seven entries of her PhD work on Hans Eworth. See the entries here at the Hans Eworth Catalogue!

* Royals’ own set of kings and queens paintings revealed – “A set of paintings of England’s kings and queens, which has been on display in Buckingham Palace since it was bought by Prince Albert almost 170 years ago, is going on public view for the first time.”

* A home-grown discovery – a portrait of the young James I & VI – I especially like the information revealed by infrared photography. I love it when science and art come together!

* Trust set to stop spraying the Mary Rose with wax – “In a major milestone in the conservation of Henry VIII’s 500-year-old flagship, staff at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard are due to turn off the jets for the first time since she was raised from the Solent 30 years ago.”

The arms of Prince Arthur at Carew Castle, Wales. Photo May 2003.

This is a close-up of Prince Arthur’s arms – the wider shot was Picture of the Week #8 and Catherine of Aragon’s were Picture of the Week #102. Arthur’s are the royal arms of the time (three fleurs-de-lis and three lions passant) with a three point label across the top, denoting him as the eldest son.

Here’s a full color version that makes it a little easier to pick out the details from the photo (image adapted from a file at Wikimedia Commons):

* 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:

Looking over the old Elizabethan gardens at Kenilworth Castle. Photo May 1998.

This is how the gardens looked before the re-design that opened in 2009.

So, what is this all about? This is one of the most straightforward explanations:

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

And if you go to any of the major sites who are participating in the blackout and protest, you’ll find more links about the potential danger of bills like these.

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!):

The Tower of London viewed from across the Thames. Photo June 2000.

* Illuminations: The Private Lives of Medieval Kings – Series on BBC Four

* Revealed: The handwritten prayer book love notes sent by Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn before they married – (Related to above) Amazing hand-written love notes in the margin of a prayer book between a lovesick Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, as he wooed her, are to be revealed in a new BBC television series.

* Also on BBC Four – A Renaissance Education: The Schooling of Thomas More’s Daughter

* Vatican throws light on history as it opens secret archives – This the exhibition I mentioned in a round-up last year

* Defiance and fear of Mary Queen of Scots revealed in letter to Vatican sent months before execution (Related to above)

And coming in just under the wire as I was getting ready to post this:

* Henry VIII had a secret daughter who should have taken English throne before Elizabeth I, historian claims – Interesting claims, but color me skeptical