London & (mainly) Stratford-upon-Avon Book Haul, June 2014

• Thomas Penn – Winter King: The Dawn of the Tudor Age
• Neil MacGregor – Shakespeare’s Restless World: A Portrait of an Era in Twenty Objects
• Julian Curry (ed.) – Shakespeare on Stage: Thirteen Leading Actors on Thirteen Key Roles (interviews with, inter alia, Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Derek Jacobi, Jude Law, Ian McKellen, Helen Mirren, Kevin Spacey and Patrick Stewart)
• Hilary Mantel – Wolf Hall & Bring Up the Bodies: Dramatized Version
• Ian Mortimer – The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England’s Self-Made King
  
• William Shakespeare – Twelfth Night: 2012 Globe Theatre Production (DVD) (an all male production starring, inter alia, Mark Rylance as Olivia and Stephen Fry as Malvolio – I’d seen that production live at the Globe in 2012 and had been waiting ever since for the DVD to come out … Best “Twelfth Night” ever!)
• William Shakespeare – Henry IV, Parts I & II: Music and Speeches from the 2014 Royal Shakespeare Company Production directed by Gregory Doran (CD)
  
• Jonathan Bate – Soul of the Age: The Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare
• Dan Jones – The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England
• Margaret Campbell Barnes – Within the Hollow Crown: A Valiant King’s Struggle to Save His Country, His Dynasty, and His Love
• Eleanor Catton – The Luminaries
  
• Ian Rankin – Saints of the Shadow Bible
• George R.R. Martin – A Game of Thrones
• George R.R. Martin – A Clash of Kings
• Maritime Greenwich
• Royal Observatory Greenwich (guide)

… plus 4 Shakespearean plays in 4 days:

• Antony & Cleopatra (Globe Theatre, London – with BrokenTune [waves] – starring Eve Best as Cleopatra, Clive Wood as Antony and Phil Daniels as Enobarbus)*
• Henry IV, Part 1 (RSC, Stratford, starring Jasper Britton as Henry IV, Antony Sher as Falstaff, Alex Hassell/Sam Marks as Prince Hal,** and Paola Dionisotti as Mistress Quickly)
• Henry IV, Part 2 (RSC, Stratford, starring the above plus Oliver Ford Davies as Justice Shallow)
• Macbeth (The HandleBards – totally hilarious.  Separate post to come!)

___________________________________________

* BT also spotted Martin Shaw in the audience, in a middle gallery section right across from us … (from which moment onwards our attention was, err, divided between the stage and the middle gallery).

** Sam Marks in the performances I saw – I later learned that he’d had all of 20 minutes’ notice that it would be him and not Alex Hassell playing … and boy, did he acquit himself marvelously!

Original post:
http://themisathena.booklikes.com/post/908177/london-mainly-stratford-upon-avon-book-haul-june-2014

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