Thanks Be To God, My Own Darling; You Are Saved And The Plague Is Abated. The Legate Which We Most Desire

“Thanks be to God, my own darling; you are saved and the plague is abated. The legate which we most desire arrived at Paris on Sunday or Monday last. I trust by next Monday to hear of his arrival in Calais and then I trust within a while to enjoy that which I have so longed for, to God’s pleasure and our own.  No more to you now, my darling, for lack of time; but that I would you were in my arms or I in yours, for I think it long since I kissed you.”

Edward Robert Hughes (1851-1914) “Dream Idyll (A Valkyrie)” Gouache and pastel on paper

“More, he insists, was quite prepared, when required, to impose Catholic beliefs on dissenters by the exercise of royal might. And now, he suggests, Mantel is compounding the erroneous approach of seeing history in the light of subsequent events by her eagerness to set More against her hero, Cromwell, to make the latter appear a “herald of the future” This is equally as preposterous as Bolt’s approach,” he says. “To reach such a conclusion about More and Cromwell from the very difficult and complicated 16th-century sources is just silly. Both men believed in the idea of enforcing ideas on others by persecution and execution. They only disagreed which ideas.” And if he had to choose between the two? “Well, More at least died nobly with magnificent insouciance. The night before Cromwell was executed, he was screaming ‘Mercy, mercy’, like a stuffed pig. That alone tells us all you need to know about the moral quality of the two.””

— Sir Thomas More: Saint or Sinner, David Starkey’s view.

Harlem in the 1920s.

“Harlem was the end of the line, the promise land, the place where all our fantasies came true. If I had to choose between Heaven and Harlem… Harlem, of course, would win everytime.” - Ossie Davis

A Man for All Seasons - 1966

Queen Elizabeth I in exquisite needlework, c1580, possibly originally applied to the front of a purse which would have contained sweetmeats or money. The symbolism worked into such a small piece is staggering and typical of the glorified mythological image of Elizabeth.