Tudors and Stuarts 2025
[pg49][fg]jpg|Fig 1. Medieval Canterbury Weekend 2016 (MCW 2016) Dan Jones signing books, photo by Matthew Crockatt.|Image[/fg]
Starting in 2016, the annual History Weekends, organised by the Centre for Kent History & Heritage at Canterbury Christ Church University, have attracted numerous well-known and distinguished historians who have welcomed the chance to speak to enthusiastic audiences.
From the beginning we adopted a format of talks from the Friday evening through to the Sunday afternoon, as well as providing several guided visits to iconic medieval and Tudor buildings in Canterbury led by experts on the Saturday mornings.
To provide a flavour of the range of guest lecturers and choice of topic, herewith a couple from each of the Weekends that include some Kent subjects and some national, even international, themes. Beginning in 2016, among the speakers were Professor David Carpenter (Henry II and Simon de Montfort) and Dr Helen Castor (Powerful Queens in Medieval & Tudor England). Then in 2017 we had Professor Glenn Richardson (Field of the Cloth of Gold) and Professor Jackie Eales (Witchcraft in Early Modern Kent). For 2018 among the choices, we welcomed Professor Carenza Lewis (Plague Pits and the Black Death) and Professor Richard Gameson (Pigments used by Canterbury Illuminators).
In 2019 Professor Paul Bennett explored Tudor education through his guided visit to the King’s School, while the speakers included Dr Alison Weir who examined the history behind the fiction concerning Henry VIII’s fourth wife: Anna of Kleve. Sadly, we lost 2020 a fortnight before it was due
to happen to the Covid epidemic, but we were back in 2021, albeit solely online with a programme that included Professor Lena Orlin (Looking for Anne Hathaway) and Professor Matthew Johnson (The Afterlife of Castles in the Tudor and Stuart periods). For 2022 we adopted a hybrid [pg48]format and having returned again to the Middle Ages, we had a double act by Professor Andrew Prescott and Dr Helen Killick (The People of Kent in 1381), while Dr David Rundle spoke eloquently on ‘The Renaissance in Medieval Canterbury, c. 1500’.
[fg]jpg|Fig 2. Dr Onyeka Nubia at Tudors and Stuarts 2023, photo by Peter Joyce.|Image[/fg]
Returning once again to the Tudors & Stuarts in 2023, it was brilliant to welcome Professor Catherine Richardson (Experiencing Life in the Early Modern House), as well as Dr Onyeka Nubia (Understanding England’s Past) who critically examined evidence for diversity in English history.
For 2024 we were fortunate to have Dr Marc Morris (The Anglo-Saxons) and Professor Mark Bailey (Women and Work post the Black Death), as well as Professor Louise Wilkinson on ‘Move over Maid Marion!’ and Dr Janina Ramirez’s ‘Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages’.
This brings me to 2025. Once again, we have a great lineup including Professor Clare Jackson, who will be speaking on ‘Devil-land: England under Siege 1588-1688’, Professor Anthony Musson who will assess Henry VIII’s Royal Progresses, Dr Christine Faraday’s talk is entitled ‘Tudor Liveliness? Discovering Vivid Art in Post-Reformation England’, and Professor Steven Gunn will give us his analysis of Henry VII’s court and why, although often overlooked, it was exceedingly important.
[fg]jpg|Fig 3. Professor Catherine Richardson at Tudors and Stuarts 2023, photo by Peter Joyce.|Image[/fg]
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Our core audience comes from Kent, London and the Home Counties, including a good number of KAS members, and people use a pick-and-mix approach when selecting their choice of lectures, with a discount for bulk buying ten or more tickets in one booking. However, we have attracted people from much further afield, including from the Midlands, northern England, the West Country and various parts of Wales, as well as Ireland, France and even visitors from Sweden and the United States. The aim has always been to provide audiences with new ideas and research regarding a diverse range of topics, to give people the chance to seek out historians they may only have encountered through books or on tv, and to meet people with similar historical interests.
As a bonus, the History Weekends seek to raise money towards the Ian Coulson Memorial Postgraduate Award Fund as a way of aiding postgraduates at Canterbury Christ Church who want to study Kent history and archaeology topics. Indeed so far, the Fund has helped almost twenty postgraduates, including several who have successfully completed Masters by Research and PhD degrees. Among the latter are Dr Dean Irwin and Dr Lily Hawker-Yates, their doctoral projects involving respectively medieval Jews in Kent and England, and prehistoric barrows in the cultural imagination of later medieval society. Of the current doctoral students, they range from almost completed (probably by the time this is read) where Tracey Dessoy investigated the role of noblewomen in Canterbury and its environs in the High Middle Ages to Michael Byrne, who has just started his second year and is studying Laurence Wade’s ‘Life of Becket’ in its late medieval context.
The programme and booking details for Tudors & Stuarts 2025 is now up on the CKHH website at ckhh.org.uk/tudors-stuarts and if you are interested in previous years, please see: ckhh.org.uk/history-weekends
As always, the CCCU Bookshop will have a stall throughout the History Weekend in Augustine House (the CCCU library and venue for the lectures) with the opportunity for book signing. Additionally, the Atrium Café will be open for much of the Weekend, and it will be excellent to welcome KAS members to Canterbury on the 25th to 27th April 2025.
[fg]jpg|Fig 4. Dr Janina Ramirez at Medieval Canterbury Weekend 2024 (MCW 2024), photo by Peter Joyce|Image[/fg]
[fg]jpg|Fig 5. Event Bookstall, photo by Peter Joyce|Image[/fg]