Parsing the Past: History Club 👑📜

Welcome to Parsing the Past, North East Culture & Conversation’s new History Club!

👑📜

We’ll meet each month to discuss an exciting era and some intriguing figures from ye old days of yore, hopefully learning a thing or two from one another, in the wonderfully historic Blackfriars parlour bar.

Blackfriars is a beautiful former mediaeval monastery; located right in the heart of Newcastle city centre, it should make for an atmospheric setting as we dive deeply into the past!

If you get hungry whilst we’re chatting, the bar serves mediaeval trencher charcuterie boards, and bar bait such as cheesy truffle fries. They also offer wine and cheese pairings, and delightful dessert wines expertly matched with sweet treats if you fancy! 🧀🍷🍮

This time, we’ll be exploring The Wars of the Roses 🌹🤍⚔️: a tumultuous time of civil war in Britain, which pitted brother against brother and cousin against cousin - the House of Lancaster vs the House of York. Eventually, it culminated in the descent of the Plantagenets and the rise of the Tudor dynasty. It served as inspiration for George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series and Game of Thrones 📺👑!

Some notable figures to look into prior to our meeting would be:

• ‘Mad king’ Henry VI and his indomitable wife Margaret of Anjou

• Charming warrior-womaniser Edward IV and his scandalously unroyal ‘roadside queen’ Elizabeth Woodville

• Car park king Richard III and his sickly wife Anne Neville

• George, Duke of Clarence, who died by drowning in a barrel of wine

• ‘The Kingmaker’: Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick

• The mysterious disappearing Princes in the Tower

• Sanctimonious zealot Margaret Beaufort and her son Henry VII, Battle of Bosworth winner and the first Tudor king, who married Elizabeth of York and thusly brought peace to England!

Feel free to research as much or as little as you like - just come prepared for a chat!

We suggest browsing the web for articles and exploring YouTube for videos (there are so many on this era!). Amazon Prime has a couple of documentaries you can take a look at: The White Queen and Her Rivals and Richard III: The King in the Car Park.

In terms of books, Dan Jones’s The Hollow Crown, Sarah Gristwood’s Blood Sisters, and Alison Weir’s Lancaster and York and Richard III & The Princes in the Tower could prove useful, but there is certainly no obligation to read through all of them! The books are suggested for your own curiosity, as a jumping off point. Pick and choose what suits you 🤓!

If you come across any other interesting source materials, feel free to examine those instead and share your findings with us! And if all else fails and you’re short on time but still want to come along for the chat and the chips, there’s always Wikipedia 😉!