CBR10Bingo: Award Winner Although the Man Booker Prize lists have long been a reliable source for new reading material, 2009 winner Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel never really appealed to me. I rarely read historical fiction, assuming it will either be stuffy and stilted and old-fashioned, or fluffy and cutesy and and old-fashioned. And while I may never become a huge fan of the genre, I can at least try to keep an open mind, particularly when it comes to reading more works by women. […]
Divorced, beheaded and died; divorced, beheaded, survived
There would appear to have been two big dangers to the health of women in the 16th century. One of them was childbirth – if you didn’t die during, it was highly likely that you would do so in the immediate aftermath, mostly thanks to puerperal fever (a uterine infection caused by, shudder, tearing and a total ignorance of hygiene on the part of Tudor midwives – and the other was marrying Henry VIII. This is the story of the six unlucky ladies to have […]