-
Royal Power takes Flight: A Reconsideration of the Staircase in the Early Modern Palace
By Atlanta Neudorf | @ARaeNeudorf In a letter written in 1663, Jean-Baptiste Colbert wrote to King Louis XIV of France that ‘in lieu of dazzling actions in war, nothing indicates better the greatness and spirit of princes than buildings’.[1] This sentiment illustrates the importance of palace architecture to the image and character of the prince in…
-
The Late Medieval Christmas Feast
By Eleanor Russell This article forms part of Doing History in Public’s Christmas series, which this year looks into patterns of consumption at Christmastide. Like today, the most spectacular and anticipated part of the medieval Christmas was not the Mass, then mandatory, but Christmas feast, an event which offered not only an opportunity to celebrate…
-
Staging History: Mary Stuart
Harriet Lyon (@HarrietLyon) reviews Friedrich Schiller’s play Mary Stuart, adapted and directed by Robert Icke. What is history if not a series of contingencies? For every thing that happens, an infinite number of other possibilities are extinguished. But what if things had been different? Although writing history certainly involves a good dose of imagination, academic historians have…
-
10. A Ticket for the Gift of the King’s Cure
By Christopher Whittell (@ChrisWhittell) The object for today’s calendar is this entry ticket to the ceremony of the Healing of the King’s Evil, issued during the reign of Charles II. Due to the very high demand to attend the ceremony, it was given to invited guests, whom were sufferers from a disease called scrofula, as…
-
3. The Salamander
By Kate McGregor (https://katemcgregor.academia.edu/) As wedding presents go a ship is certainly the pièce de résistance. A gift from the French King François I to his new son-in-law James V, King of Scots, it represented the renewal of the Franco-Scots ‘Auld alliance’. [1] At its helm was a glistening salamander, a ‘dragon in flames of…
doinghistoryinpublic.org 