A lighter Shardlake installment than Revelation, with some interesting Hampshire history about Mary Rose.
Anglo-French War goes Cultural
not sure CJ would be as keen on encouraging donations to the Mary Rose Trust, now they’re trusting their online platform to a grad-student intern pushing campus politics. To be fair, she’s definitely getting a chance to "engage with the public to understand how they experience the museum" since The Sun piled on with an equally ahistorical sudden defence of "Tudor heroes" (who’s gonna tell them some were European mercenaries?)
ahh the Lamentations of Sinners..
Alas such online wars can still erupt from a single kneejerk X, this time from Gay writer Philip Hensher, who in fairness fleshed out his critique of the online discourse:
Rather curiously, none of this engaged with what British sailors have done since the dawn of time: namely, have sex with each other. But “queer people” are often, I find, a bit prudish like that.
So I give the museum blogpost the life expectancy of a Hampshireman in the mid-1540s who’s handy at archery.
And maybe that’s for the best. Let’s be realistic about British politeness. We’ll probably be better prepared for grown-up discourse offline, in say the Mayflower where I saw SIX The Musical whose poppy marketing belies its Oxbridge smarts.
And which went through 3 years of rewrites and gatekeeping before hitting the West End.
back to Shardlake
speaking of Lamentations, onto the next book on this remarkably enlightening series, coming to your very small screens next year.
It’s about how capricious English government causes populations to divide themselves into radicals & conservatives and religiously disagree.. though that might just be my modern lens!
Long live Shardlake, his cancer-beating creator, and his editors.
Heartstone by C. J. Sansom 📚
