Essays – Table of Contents

by Katherine Ashe A grand feast was prepared for Twelfth Night, January sixth. The three soaring arches on each side of the hall were swagged with holly. At the Countess Eleanor’s whim, a swag was hung upon the great mural of the Montfort red lion rampant painted on the broad white wall behind the dais. The ...

The ivory diptych from which the Montfort series book covers are taken In Catholic tradition saints, and Jesus, can be identified by an object, an animal or a situation that is associated with their history. The central figure in the righthand panel of the medieval bone diptych that I’ve used for the cover of my Montfort ...

June 20, 2012 The Millennium – a period of a thousand years in which peace, justice, the fulfillment of mankind’s hopes will be met? This idea has risen, submerged and risen again repeatedly in Western Europe and the countries effected by its cultures. Repeatedly the notion has brought on wars, has transformed the entire economic and social ...

I began research on Montfort in 1977. By 1985 I had the first draft completed, at approximately 1,500 pages.  There were a few fairly recent academic biographies on Simon de Montfort; I chose to frame my work as a novelized biography for the greater freedom of informed speculation as to how his life progressed from ...

How “true to history” is an historical novel – or a scholarly history for that matter? There is the question of egregious license, where the writer for the purposes of art deliberately fictionalizes an event, as when Dorothy Dunnett credits her fictitious character, Francis Crawford of Lymond, with France’s conquest of Callais from England in ...

Simon’s Death at Evesham – His shield is a Red Lion on White. From the Chronica Majora written and illustrated by the monks of Saint Albans who knew Simon de Montfort personally and well. The family of Montfort had as their device a European lion rampant. Unlike the African lion, it has no mane; it’s similar ...

Simon de Montfort expelled the Jews of Leicester in 1231. It was in his youth and he was not yet Earl of Leicester. He found himself effectively leader of a mob attacking the Jews for their high interest rates in money lending. Montfort’s dealings with the Jews of Leicester were not on religious but on ...

November 8, 2012 Since movable type brought an end to the copyist garrets and sweatshops of the Middle Ages there probably has not been a more profound change in the way books are created and marketed than is going on at present. That the major American trade publishers have failed to move with, or even lead ...

July 18, 2012 Celeste Holm (April 29, 1917 – July 15, 2012) It must have been 1992 when I met Celeste. A mutual friend, Carmela Ross, high in years to be undertaking such a thing, was launching a new theater company. The party, on New York’s East Side in the neighborhood of the UN, was ...

May 23 2012 I’ve recently returned from a conference sponsored by the Mortimer Society in the UK, the subject was “What if Simon de Montfort had won the battle of Evesham?”  To those who haven’t gotten through the fourth volume of my book Montfort this mightn’t be an animating subject. But it is. For the history of ...

Seven short stories: Fragment | From a Traveler’s Journal | Where Were We? | Beneath the Bodhi Tree | Biba | Aunt Nonie | A Terrible Loss

A collection of essays including: Sheep | Fernwood Cottage, Its History and Hazards | South is Up, North is Down | Roger Sells His Farm | Horses | Neighbors | Our Wedding | Dogs | More Horses and Sheep | Starlight | Ducks and Geese | Children of Nature (furred) | Thibaut the Guardian ...

Pigeons, Doves and Squab: for food, sport, communications, and as icon Pigeons: those annoying fowl who strut about underfoot in most cities, have been living cozily with mankind since at least 3,000 BCE, providing food, sport and communications services for most of that time. First, “pigeon” and “dove” are the same thing, though multiplied into numerous ...

The Land between the Great Waters was in decline, though a decline so recent that its inhabitants could barely sense the apex from the gentle slope of its failing hegemony. Gallantly, or wickedly, the mountains, forests and the sweeping pastures of its many regions had been wrested from their primordial rulers not so many generations ...

September 19, 2012: Where I live, near the top of a mountain, 2000 feet up facing north and at a latitude similar to Cape Cod, summer usually ends toward the end of August, with the first frost. The last frost has usually been in late May or June. The local joke is “Nine months of ...