Just to add to the sequence of event posts:
Come Thursday week, I’ll be trying to keep my head about me when many before have lost theirs (though I doubt they blamed i on me).
Which is to say, I’ll be talking Newton, the Mint, counterfeiters and all kinds of good stuff at the Tower of London at 6:30, May 16. (ETA: The book from which all this derives can be found here (US) and here (UK)*.) It’s not a free event, alas, but tickets for any geographically enabled Balloon Juicers can be booked here. I believe the talk will go up at iTunes U at some point, and I’ll add details when I post a reminder next week.
So, some of you have complained, with cause, that I’m kind of late with this sort of announcement. This marks a conscious attempt at improvement. I channel my inner Charles Dreyfus: “Every day in every way I’m getting better and better.”**
*I do think the Brits (Faber) nailed the cover.
**It was a Pink Panther flick that introduced me to the phrase whose origins lie here.
Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of a Woman, inscribed in gold over red “Anna Bollein Queen,” c. 1532-6. (Note: there’s a fair amount of controversy over whether this or another drawing attributed to Holbein do in fact depict Henry VIII’s unfortunate second wife.
Professor
Did you know that Henry VIII trained to be a Catholic Priest until his elder brother died?
scav
Huzzah, congats and enjoy the ravens! FAR from geographically enabled but iTunes U will be haunted faithfully.
How do you look in a crown?
Tom Levenson
@scav:
Uneasy.
R-Jud
If I can move a couple of things, I’ll happily head down to the big smoke for that!
scav
@Tom Levenson: That is one of the time honored ways, presumably made worse by jet-lag.
PeorgieTirebiter
Why so shy about flogging your book? It’s a terrific read, even for science challenged folks like me.
BGinCHI
@Professor: He was also known as “the defender of the faith” before he decided to chuck it over that Boleyn woman.
BGinCHI
@Tom Levenson: Keep your angles rakish.
Villago Delenda Est
@BGinCHI:
He was “Defender of the Faith” even after that. ESPECIALLY after that.
The monarch to this day is “Defender of the Faith”.
Tom Levenson
@PeorgieTirebiter: Fair point. Thanks for the props, and see the bit of self-promotion above.
brettvk
@BGinCHI: The Pope rewarded him with that title after he published a spirited refutation of Luther — then Henry kept it after he usurped papal authority and absconded with the Church’s English property. A neat trick.
gogol's wife
I just love Tudor gossip.
gogol's wife
Yes, the British cover is beautiful.
Chris
BJ London meet-up? We have got pubs, and I’ve got a background in science docs, might be fun.
anneboleynshead
Henry’s whole purpose was not a particular woman, but a legitimate male heir. After I suffered the miscarriage of a male child, Henry told me he would give me no more male children. He hastily disposed of me and married Jane Seymour, who delivered the heir that he wanted. She died in childbed feever, and he took other wives, but had no more heirs.
His son died young, bringing his oldest daughter Mary to the throne, and then my daughter Elizabeth, the greatest queen England has ever had. Having learned something from my fate, she never submitted to a husband and bore no children. And she ended the Tudor dynasty,
as fine a revenge upon her father as I could imagine.
Tom Levenson
@Chris: Sounds good to me.
Let me get my (very crowded) schedule of visiting my family (me mum was a Brit) more or less sorted, and then I’ll see if there’s a date that might work.
Julia Grey
THIS woman doesn’t appear to be a bewitching beauty, in any case. Maybe it’s the chin-in pose, but ugg.
dm
Tom, I very much enjoyed Newton and the Counterfeiter — a pleasure that was only deepened when I later read Neal Stephenson’s historical
bookshelfnovel, “The Baroque Cycle”, which left me wondering if you’d read the books and if so, what you thought of them. I think the two works complement one another well.I agree that your book is a terrific read — and surprisingly topical, given the role of misunderstanding the role of money (viz. the austerians) has in our politics today.
Amir Khalid
@Julia Grey:
Tastes do change over time, just like fashions. For example, look at the photos of beautiful women from a century or more ago. Maybe this was the ideal of feminine beauty in Henry Vee Eye Eye Eye’s day.
Villago Delenda Est
@gogol’s wife:
Tudor gossip is good, but Plantagenet gossip is FANTASTIC!
scav
@Amir Khalid: So much of beauty and especially bewitchment is in motion and speech as well.
Hanover gossip, and they certainly worked mightily at it, still somehow manages to be dense and stodgy.
ETA: explain Wallis Simpson launching anything let alone 1,000s of same and the uneasy headgear.
Origuy
Anne was not universally considered a great beauty; she was charming, intelligent, and spirited. Maybe her attraction for Henry was that he couldn’t have her as easily as some other women. That drawing doesn’t look like the descriptions of her, though. More like her sister Mary.
Tom, if your hosts offer to give you a boat ride to your talk, politely decline. People who enter the Tower that way tend not to come out.
JGabriel
OT (Sorry, Tom), but Ray Harryhausen has died at the age of 92.
RIP, O Great Dynamator.
.
BGinCHI
@Villago Delenda Est: Different faith, but yeah.
Violet
Don’t know how long it has been since you’ve been to London. I hadn’t been to London in awhile (am usually north and in Scotland/Wales when going to the UK) until going last October. What a fantastic city it has become. Hope you have a wonderful visit.
Really enjoyed touring the Tower Bridge, including a visit to the engine room. As a science guy, you might enjoy that. They also offer Engineering Tours, but it looks like they stopped those in March.
David in NY
Well, gee. I read that book, liked it, and didn’t know you were the guy who wrote it.
aimai
That is so very, very, cool. I wish we could be there.
aimai
bemused senior
Every day in every way …
The Coué principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Cou%C3%A9
IowaOldLady
Anne needs a shave.
Tom Levenson
@Violet: I go at least once a year. I am close to my English family; the flights get cheap from time to time; and there’s always some reasonable work pretext to bring me over. London is a fine city now. I keep wishing I’d bought a pied-à-terre there in the late 90s when I had a chance. Now…impossible.
@Origuy: Actually — I’m thinking of taking the Thames connect boat down from Westminster….maybe not such a good idea. ;)
@dm: I didn’t — and haven’t yet — read Neal’s cycle, despite the fact that I’m a fan of his. I actually met him as I was embarked on my Newton book and told him I had to put the first volume down, as I really didn’t want his voice in my head as I was trying to imagine my Newton. (He gave me dispensation.) Now that I’m getting going on another book in 18th century finance, I feel constrained still — but I’ve got several longish flights coming up, so may yet get tucked into the work. Thanks for the kind words about N and the Counterfeiter, by the way.
@David in NY:
Yup. Guilty. Glad you liked it.
Cheryl from Maryland
All sources have Anne as a brunette. Some have her sister Mary as a blonde ( so that crap movie with Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansen wasn’t totally off , just mostly.)
Julia Grey
Ordered the paperback, since it was actually cheaper than the Kindle version. Looking forward.
I, too, read Stephenson’s fictional version of Newton’s machinations in the Baroque trilogy. I will be fascinated to find out what the real Newton was actually up to at the Mint.
Tom Levenson
@Julia Grey: Makes perfect sense to buy the paperback. Alas, I, your author, get a smaller royalty from the dead trees compared with the electrons. Not that I’m anywhere close to having that be a significant fact…I got a long way to go before this book earns out its advance.
PS — thanks so much for buying — any version. It warms an author’s heart like you wouldn’t believe.
dm
@Tom Levenson: I look forward to your book on eighteenth-century finance. In that case, stay away from the Baroque Cycle for a bit longer.
Anathem is probably safe.
Tehanu
The great novel about Anne Boleyn is Norah Lofts’ The Concubine, probably out of print now but well worth any effort to find it. Lofts portrays her as an intelligent woman, not as the oversexed bimbo of that stupid movie.