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Post by Count Zero on Sept 15, 2010 2:01:12 GMT -4
CZ, is that you in your avatar? Yes, me and my two sisters. Needless to say, visiting a place where they build rockets to fly men to the Moon made quite an impression on a certain 5-year old.
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Post by tedward on Sept 15, 2010 4:17:12 GMT -4
Our Will wrote plays and that has not changed with todays writers. Things are never so dull as in real life when you want to get stuff on the telly and people watching (soap opera's mimicking real life?). He also had to be careful of not upsetting Liz.
I understand that Henry V camp fire bit before Agincourt was not that way in real life? The English camp was rather jovial. I can see where artistic licence plays a part to get the crowd interested.
Also, Richard the III debate?
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Post by gillianren on Sept 15, 2010 12:35:30 GMT -4
Well, in Richard III, I don't think it was much about upsetting Bess as James, since I'm pretty sure Bess was dead before Will wrote it. Either way, though, they were both descendants of Henry VII.
The thing is, I've read compelling evidence that Richard III was actually a very good king who was kind to his family. (The Black Adder jokes about it, but it's actually got some sound historical documentation.) His brother's children, far from being heirs to the throne, had been shown in court to be illegitimate. There isn't even compelling evidence that the Princes in the Tower were dead by the end of his reign. However, the incoming king--Henry VII--was using the boys' legitimacy as a major part of his claim, because he married their sister and used that as part of it. But if the boys were alive, they had a greater right to the throne than Henry or Elizabeth did. So yeah.
Incidentally, does anyone else find all this a lot more interesting than any supposed Cold War hoax, especially given that there's actually evidence of all of this?
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Sept 15, 2010 13:04:54 GMT -4
I just read The Daughter of Time a short while ago - a classic mystery about Richard III. Yes, it seems Richard (who wasn't a humpback) got a raw deal from history, even if he did in fact murder the princes.
He's still a fantastic villain in Shakespeare.
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Post by captain swoop on Sept 15, 2010 14:20:21 GMT -4
His family the De Brus' family were based in Skelton Castle a couple of miles up the road from me in North Yorkshire. The local school is called 'De Brus' At the Battle of the Standard (1138) there were members of the De Brus family on both sides.
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Post by tedward on Sept 16, 2010 8:21:50 GMT -4
Richard the III was an accomplished fighter. His last act was not one who would be hunched and arm withered and the irony is if he had met Henry Tudor in a fair fight he would have won. But another thing that can be used here is the Stanleys switching sides during the battle. His involvement with the twins is also very questionable. Have a good book on the subject somewhere, but they certainly would have been a worry to him.
One story that tickles the grey matter is that many years later one person was brought to light as a possible, indicating they were spirited away and lived lives in obscurity. Maybe more of a fancy though.
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Post by gillianren on Sept 16, 2010 12:30:51 GMT -4
It's quite popular to believe that anyone who disappeared from the historical record lived a quiet life in obscurity. Hence the King in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
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Post by bazbear on Sept 17, 2010 1:44:53 GMT -4
Okay, denying it as a landing zone makes a certain amount of sense, though using it as a first landing base for an invasion kind of doesn't. I'm just saying, you know, the Soviet Union already had a pretty secure landing base for a European war. Thats fine. As I said, I have no clue as to it's validity. The Idea was that if a sudden Soviet blitzkrieg ocurred, then the U.S. by the time it assembled a response would of necessity, be landing on the western fringes of Europe. Of no use in a surprise attack of course, but that was never it's purpose. It may well be another example of cold war lunacy. Everyone was paranoid then. Even us. Hence the reason the US created REFORGER en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REFORGERBasically the plan was U.S. based Army units would bring all of their small arms, personal equipment and TA-50 (all your field gear/kit) and fall in on prepositioned brigade/divisional vehicle and large equipment sets (including artillery) already in Europe. The idea was that intel would give away a build up by the Warsaw Pact early enough to trigger this response before actual fighting began. I was a jeep driver for a 1LT acting as a referee in the '87 exercise It was certainly the funnest thing I ever did as a soldier, well on the job at least!
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Post by tedward on Sept 23, 2010 3:36:02 GMT -4
Heard about this the other day. Sounds interesting.
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Post by drewid on Oct 2, 2010 17:37:50 GMT -4
Just finished the companion to that yesterday. Fascinating stuff. The MI5 one
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