WEBSITE LAUNCH!!!!

Yes, finally, at long last, it’s here!

Today we (Alianore/Kathryn and I (Lady D/Jules) are pleased as punch and immensely proud to announce the official launch of the Everything Edward II website. It has everything from both of our blogs together in one place, plus a few little extras, so be sure to put it in your bookmarks!.

Obviously it has room for lots of growth and new features. There are plenty of areas that still need articles written, and plenty of locations which need photographs taken. If you have any suggestions or comments – or if you notice any typos, missing links or anything else that needs rectifying, please let us know. Thanks for all the support you’ve given us on the blogs so far and please continue to support us on this new venture. We would love it if this could eventually be one of the biggest – and best – historically themed sites on the web!

And for those who are interested…

Stats:
Numer of pages: 304
Number of photo galleries: 25
Containing: 414 images
Estimated number of woman hours: 451, or 56 full working days (it shouldn’t have taken this long but as this was the first website I’ve ever made, this also includes the learning process!)
Number of extra cups of coffee consumed: 100
Number of extra grey hairs to be covered: 500
Number of times head held in hands in dispair: lost count!
Number of times nearly forgotten to feed dog: 11
Level of satisfaction and feeling of achievement upon completion: 100%

And for those who are really interested:

Techie Details
Platform: Mac OS X 10.5.8
Software Used: Rapidweaver 4 using RWT Moxie2 theme
Rapidweaver Plugins Used: Blocks, Loghound Sitemap, Rapidsearch (not up yet)
Other Software: Photoshop, Illustrator

Future plans:
Addition of North Wales posts and galleries
Update to Mostly Medieval Bookshop (more books to be added - but if you could buy your books through us it would help fund the hosting costs etc)
Additions to existing photo galleries, e.g. Gloucester Cathedral, Tewkesbury Abbey etc

There is one issue I know about - the size of the italicised text - but any others, please tell. There may also be issues with older versions of IE - this happens with a lot of websites. The best thing to do in this case is, I'm afraid, to upgrade to a newer version (free).

I shall be updating the site once a week, but you can still catch up with any blog updates on there instantly.

Right, after all that, I now need a little break before starting my novel Despenser ;-). More news on that soon!

Oh, and just in case you forget.... CLICK HERE! ;-)

'Medieval Day' at the Cheltenham Literary Festival

It's that time of year again when some big names come to Cheltenham, just down the road from me, for a two week's long literary festival (or a mutual back-slapping and new book publicising tour as it could be seen by the less well-inclined). This year, as I am practising being a starving artist of the scribbling kind, I couldn't afford as many talks as usual, but I couldn't resist the two that were on today.

Needing a few hours break from all things medieval on the website, I went and watched two talks on the subject of... well, medieval things. The first one was with Juliet Barker, author of, amongst others, The Tournament in England 1100-1400, and Agincourt: The King, the Campaign, the Battle. This talk was entitled 'Conquest: The English Kingdom of France' - which is also the title of her new book. She talked about what happened after the battle of Agincourt - how Henry V struggled for, and won, the crown of France - only to have his son lose it again some years later. I must admit, not being so familiar with the period, I would have liked to have had more background knowledge - but time is always short for these talks and I think Juliet did a very good job.

The next talk was on a subject much closer to 'home'. Marc Morris gave an excellent talk about Edward I and why he considered him both 'great' and 'terrible'. Once again, time was the enemy as it was such a vast and interesting subject to cover in just three quarters of an hour, but I really enjoyed the talk - especially the jibes he got in about Braveheart! He also seemed pretty fair in the couple of comments he made about Edward II being a poor ruler by comparison - and he was not reticent in talking about Edward I's bad sides (as we see them today) - such as his treatment of Isabel Macduff and Robert Bruce's sister Mary, and his anti-semitism for instance. I already have Marc's book Edward I: A Great and Terrible King on my book shelf waiting to be read. I think, after today, it's going to move closer to the top of the TBR pile!

And now, dredged from over two months of records, some silly searches. Like Susan, people have been extremely sensible of late and have turned in pretty boring search strings on the whole (or loads on the same theme, namely 'hanging, drawing and quartering!). However, I did manage to find a few that made me go 'eh?':

medieval scaffold for hanging pictures
I must admit, it would certainly be a dramatic backdrop for your Monets!

who is buried in tewkesbury abbey
Maybe Lord Lucan and Shergar? Actually, it sounds like an opener to a Medieval crime mystery.

john comyn=joan de valence
Does this mean that John Comyn had a sex change and became Joan de Valence!?


how did gilbert de clare 8th earl of hertford body get back to twekesbury
Airmail from Bannockburn? In a black cab? Courier delivery? It might have a hard job finding Twekesbury in the Satnav though!

purbeck, impostor
I say, have at thou! Hang on, who the heck is Purbeck? Is it perhaps a conflation of Perkin and Warbeck? In which case, wrong period.

jouster,s wear
Now, is that jouster's wear (in which case, what?), or jouster swear (in which case, what?)

execution stripped legs crowd
Obviously shorts and flip flops are the fashionable attire for this season's hangings!

And finally: web site update for those who haven't lot the will to live yet... I am now cross-linking the pages, so getting much closer to launch. I just have to make sure I get there before the men in white carry me off in a straitjacket!