Our Ancestors

Italo Calvino

Viscount Medardo is bisected by a Turkish cannonball on the plains of Bohemia; Baron Cosimo, at the age of twelve, retires to the trees for the rest of his days; Charlemagne's knight, Agiluf, is an empty suit of armour. These three vivid images are the points of departure for Calvino's classic triptych ...

A Tudor Christmas

Alison Weir; Siobhan Clarke

Christmas in Tudor times was a period of feasting, revelry and merrymaking 'to drive the cold winter away?. A carnival atmosphere presided at court, with a twelve-day-long festival of entertainments, pageants, theatre productions and 'disguisings?, when even the king and queen dressed up in costume to f...