News: New Shakespeare

Double Falsehood; or, the Distrest Lovers had been thought a "false Shakespeare", a hoax, for over two centuries. Now the Arden Shakespeare has decided to publish a complete version, placing it in the Shakespeare canon, and the Royal Shakespeare Company will stage a version of it this next summer at Stratford-upon-Avon. The version is being developed by associate director Gregory Doran. The story is based on parts of Cervantes' Quixote.

Read the whole article in The Times.

New Book: "Cromwell to Cromwell"

The History Press has just published "Cromwell to Cromwell: Reformation to Civil War". From their website:

The English reformers of the 1530s, with Thomas Cromwell at their head, continued to have a strong belief in kingly rule and authority, despite their radical approach to the power of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church. Resisting the king was tantamount to resisting God in their eyes, and even on a matter of conscience the will of the king should prevail. Yet just over 100 years later, Charles I was called the 'man of blood', and Oliver Cromwell famously declared that 'we will cut off his head with the crown on it'. But how did we get from the one to the other? How did the deferential Reformation become a redical revolution? Following on from his biography of Thomas Cromwell, John Schofield examines how the English character and the way it perceived royal rule changed between the time of Thomas Cromwell and that of his great-great-grandnephew Oliver.

It's an interesting concept for a book, and if I had the money I'd run to buy this at the nearest bookshop. Both Cromwells were key figures in the shaping of Modern England, both leaders of religious revolutions that ultimately benefited the land-owning middle-classes.

John Schofield is the author of "The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell: Henry VIII's Most Faithful Servant" (the hyperbolical title almost makes me smirk) to which this "Cromwell to Cromwell" serves as sequel.