BBC History Talks and Festivals in July and October

Two upcoming events:

History Live! hosted by the English Heritage Society at Kellmarsh Hall in Northamptonshire features a BBC History Magazine Lecture Tent with many important scholars and interesting topics, including several on English Reformation era topics. For example:

~Elizabeth I: The Queen's Two Bodies

Anna Whitelock will look at the life of Queen Elizabeth I, as both a public and a private person.

About the speaker: Anna Whitelock is a senior lecturer in early modern history at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is also a popular historical author, and her latest book Elizabeth's Bedfellows: An Intimate History of the Queen's Court is published in May.

and  

~Scars on the Landscape: Encountering the Dissolution of the Monasteries

By examining some of those places one can visit today, Suzannah Lipscomb will explore the extraordinary impact of Henry VIII's suppression of the monasteries. She will draw out the poignant insights that remaining sites can give us into the enormous extent of the Tudor devastation.

About the speaker: Suzannah Lipscomb is a historian and broadcaster who specialises in the Tudor period. She is Senior Lecturer and Convenor for History at New College of the Humanities. Her most recent book is A Visitor's Companion to Tudor England.

History Live! is scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, 20-21 July.

The BBC History Magazine is hosting its own festival, the BBC History Weekend in Malmesbury, Wiltshire:

This autumn sees the launch of the very first BBC History Magazine weekend festival, in the ancient hilltop town of Malmesbury in Wiltshire. It is the oldest borough in England, with a charter given by Alfred the Great in 880. It’s also the burial place of Æthelstan, grandson of Alfred and the first king of all England, and the abbey that houses his tomb is Malmesbury’s crowning glory. In 1000 AD, Eilmer the flying monk had an early attempt at aviation from the Abbey’s tower (it failed; he broke his legs), and in the churchyard is buried one Hannah Twynnoy, famously eaten by a tiger in the town in 1703. The 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes was born in Malmesbury, so it’s an ideal venue for a history festival.

More than 20 top-name historians will be speaking over the course of the weekend in two lecture rooms in Malmesbury’s Town Hall. There will be a fully-stocked history bookshop, courtesy of Waterstones Cirencester, within the Town Hall for the duration of the festival, where our speakers will be signing books.

Speakers range from Leanda de Lisle to Alison Weir, from Dan Jones to Helen Castor, Linda Porter and Michael Wood, and topics they will discuss are most wide-ranging.

Malmesbury Abbey is now an Anglican parish church, but of course it was a monastery before the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII. It was founded in the 7th century as a Benedictine monastery and King Athelstan is bured there. This event is scheduled for October 25 through 27.