Category: Royal People
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Book Review: “Lionessheart” by Catherine Hanley
Today, I’m really excited to be writing a book review of the upcoming Lionessheart by historian Catherine Hanley. The topic of the book is the exact type of history I love to read (and write!) and so I couldn’t wait to dive in and share my thoughts with you all. NB, I was sent a…
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Royal People: Trưng Trắc and the Sisters’ Rebellion
When tracing the lives of women who lived millennia ago, extracting the real history from the subsequent myth and legend can be difficult. This is certainly the case with Trưng Trắc and her sister, Trưng Nhị, two Vietnamese noblewomen who lived in the first century AD. The sisters led a heroic revolt against the Chinese,…
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Royal People: Mansa Musa, The World’s Richest Man?
If I told you to guess who the richest person who has ever lived was, you would probably think of a modern billionaire. Someone like Bill Gates, Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. But what if I told you that there was an African king who lived 700 years ago whose wealth made theirs pale in…
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Royal People: Princess Nest, Wales’ Romanticised Heroine?
People love a good story. And when real life seems to mirror tales of old, then we can get caught up in it all and conflate them into our own romanticised version. One woman who this certainly applies to is Princess Nest ferch Rhys who, since the 19th century, has been known as “Helen of…
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A Brief Moment of History: Was Queen Elizabeth I Secretly a Man?
There are many historical conspiracy theories that abound (often involving aliens…) but one of my favourite is the peculiar theory that Tudor Queen Elizabeth I was, in fact, a man. Let us explore! The theory was first written down back in the nineteenth century by Dracula author, Bram Stoker. Bram had visited the village of…
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Elizabeth II: Before She Was Queen
On Thursday 8th September 2022, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth died. She was Britain’s longest-lived and longest-reigning monarch, and the longest serving female head of state in the world. As a Brit and a historian with an interest and knowledge of royal history, it felt only fitting to write something about…
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Did Gertrude Courtenay accuse Anne Boleyn of witchcraft?
Today on Just History Posts I am very excited to be hosting Sylvia Barbara Soberton on her blog tour for her new book, Ladies-in-Waiting: Women Who Served Anne Boleyn. Sylvia is a writer, historian and researcher specialising in the history of the Tudors and I actually had the pleasure of interviewing her two years ago.…
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The Queen and the Mistress
If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter then you may have caught wind that I have spent the last few years writing another book. Today I am really excited to make my formal announcement of it! Coming November 2022 (April 2023 if you are in the US) is my second non-fiction history book, The…
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Anthony Woodville, William Caxton and Early Printing in England
Today we have another fabulous guest post! Today’s writer is Danielle Burton, a history blogger who also works as a project archive assistant at the Derbyshire Record Office. She has a degree in History and an MA in Public History and Heritage. She has a special interest in Anthony Woodville, of whom she is currently…
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Royal People: Isabella of Woodstock, The Medieval Princess Who Controlled Her Own Fate
It is a well-rehearsed fact that in the medieval period princesses were political currency, pawns who were married off to foreign strangers as small children and were expected to fulfil their duty with grace and without complaint. But one woman who defied these expectations that we hold of medieval royalty was Isabella of Woodstock, the…
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