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This week has been hard. I’m tired. Very tired. If it were just the work, it would be fine, but the added pressure of parenthood is difficult at times, and this was one of them. I’ve been reading (yes, again). Mainly theoretical stuff on monarchical republic and oral culture. A friend pointed out that I…

Today I’ve been looking at Cardinal Reginald Pole’s letters. It’s an interesting, European perspective on Mary’s accession.  To be honest I’ve not got a great deal done this week.  I haven’t been feeling very well, and I suspect that I’ve been overdoing things over Easter trying to keep the children occupied as well as doing…

Originally posted on The Hoper of Far-Flung Hopes: *BEWARE: long blog post* Yesterday, I put a post on my Twitter feed asking for peoples’ thoughts on self-funding PhDs. I was really staggered by the response I got: 60 tweets on the subject, with a really diverse range of feedback and opinions, some of which hadn’t…

I’ve started telling my children that I’m working.  It’s easier.  “Mummy is doing a PhD” is completely incomprehensible to an 8 year old, let alone a 6 year old or a 4 year old, so I’ve always told them I was writing a book.  But recently I’ve realised that to them, that doesn’t matter, it’s…

I’ve now finished reading ‘Tudor Royal Iconography’ by John N. King which was interesting and pointed me in the direction of a few different sources.  Happily, neither of the two iconography books that I’ve read has used all the source material that I have.  I’m about to start reading Alice Hunt’s PhD thesis, and then…

Well, at least for the children anyway.  Last week I visited the Salford Diocesan Archives in  Manchester and the Talbot Library in Preston.  They both have an excellent selection of secondary material, including, in the case of the Talbot Library, quite large sections on the religious orders and Mariological works.   The Talbot library is housed…

Last week was a busy week. It started with a Spanish listening test (I don’t think I’ve done very well) and finished with my youngest child’s 5th birthday and a party in the garden with family and a few of his friends. Fitted into the middle was my first research panel, which took about 45…

I sent off my first piece of research work to my supervisors today. It’s about the positive representations of Mary I during her reign. A lot of the images that writers use are biblical, and a couple of ballad writers refer to her as the marigold. There is even a ‘godly Psalm’ about her, written…