Why study The Tudors?

It's a perfectly reasonable question.
You don't have to come from the "I weren't there so I don't care" school of history to ask it.
I suppose Henry 8th is the best known Tudor King. he has a certain celebrity status. If he were in the Big Brother House for a special monarchist edition he would either get voted out very early on or be retained for his sensationaly selfish and oafish attitudes to life and his fellow human beings.I imagine he would appal and fascinate us simutaneously.
However, the cult of celebrity is not one we wish to encourage at school.
None the less, if destiny had decreed that we should have a real King Arthur and had spared Henry's older brother England would not have become protestant. We would have avoided frequent punch ups with Catholic Ireland and France and - as John O Farrell puts it - a future Ian Paisley would have spent his campaigning energies organising a zebra crossing outside the new Asda on The Falls Road.
Had Henry fallen for an ancestor of Germain Greer instead of Catherine of Aragon our patriarchal system for determining the line of inheritance might have been challenged over four centuries early during fiesty debates in the royal antechambers.
This would have saved much royal squabbling and intrigue across Europe and help us side step rule by many a feckless male who ignored the counsel of a wise older sister.
We might have retained a religious, artistic heritage to rival the Italians had henry not coped with his own credit crunch by confiscating most religious works of art to supplement the royal coffers.
Scotland and England would not have come to be ruled by a single monarch.Our zany unwritten constitution that allows the British to have four chances of sharing the glory of winning the world cup, which must seem very unfair to every other competing nation, would have never come to pass.
If the first Tudor monarch, Henry 7th, had listened to Christopher Columbus when he dropped by to ask for money to help open up a little venture he had planned in the far east the good people of Latin America would be the good people of Anglo Saxon America.
History is full of potential "What if.." debates. This what makes it fun.
People say that the only reason to travel is to return to your own country and see it as other see it for the first time.
Perhaps you don't need to travel. A journy in imagination through time will take you back along many a branching road. A glimpse down each of those paths not taken will help you return to the present more aware that chance rather than destiny brought us to this present state. The Tudor period offers us more chances than many other periods to see how drastically different life could have been if...........
For children the over arching lesson must be -Take nothing for granted. Be ready for change while planning and hoping for security and watch out for fallen branches!






sister.

Summer Shakespeare at St Katharines School

I went to a Technical School back in the 1960s and 70's.
These schools were created during the Wilson years and were part of the drive to set Britian aglow with the "White heat of technological revolution."
At A level the subject choices were science, science or science or maths. If I had heard the name Shakespeare at the time I would have guessed he was a leader of the rebel tribesmen in Zulu - a film that was big at the time.
When I was first introduced to a Shakepearean text it left me cold. The meaning of the verse is impenetrable at first reading and the meter and flavour of the words is subdued on the flat page.
I learned to appreciate Shakespeare much later watching it performed on stage. When you return to the text with images and characterisations in your mind it can live again in your imagination.
This is why I've believed for several years that the best time to capture children's interest in Shakespeare is when they are at primary school.
Primary children lack the prejudices and inhibitions that I and many others developed through adolescence. Young children learn the meaning of the words by acting them out. Shakespeare contains more action and passion than any soap opera.
Any child with a sense for the beauty and utility of language will be aware that they are swimming in a sensual sea of hidden depths, undercurrents and metaphors even if they don't grasp where these currents are taking them.
This is our hope as we embark on rehearsals for our play. It will be called The Life and Smirks of William Shakespeare. Parts of it are funny links to draw in some of the most famous characters and speeches of The Bard. Much of it will be the words of The Bard himself in the mouths of babes and sucklings. There will be little editing of Shakespeare's words.
We are aiming for a Shakespeare in the park feeling. Part of the play will take place outside whatever the weather.
The production will probably happen during the last week of term.
Next time you find yourself behind a St Katharine's child in the queue at the new Tescos in Hungerford you could also be behind Henry 5th, Prospero, Richard 3rd, Romeo or Juillette who might drop into a speech to "summon up a muse of fire "- given the right kind of cue.