by Helen Kain | Jun 6, 2026 | Carousel Fascinating People, Fascinating People, Medieval (1066–1485)
Most people associate William the Conqueror with England, but his story begins across the Channel in Normandy. A duke known to his contemporaries as William the Bastard inherited a fragile duchy and transformed it into one of the most formidable powers in Europe. Born...
by Helen Kain | Jun 6, 2026 | Carousel Fascinating People, Fascinating People, Medieval (1066–1485)
Most people know Harold Godwinson for one thing: losing the Battle of Hastings. History has not been especially kind to Harold. Overshadowed by William the Conqueror’s victory, he is often remembered simply as the last Anglo-Saxon king—the man standing in the...
by Helen Kain | May 24, 2026 | Carousel Fascinating People, Fascinating People, Stuarts (1603–1714)
Born in 1668 into a Warwickshire gentry family, Thomas Archer belonged to the generation that reshaped England after the Restoration. Christopher Wren was rebuilding London. Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor were redefining aristocratic grandeur. Architecture itself had become a...
by Helen Kain | Apr 4, 2026 | Carousel Fascinating People, Early Middle Ages (410-1066), Fascinating People
There are moments in history when everything changes. Then there are moments when it seems that nothing has changed at all, but technically, everything has. Italy in the late 5th century was one of those moments. The Western Roman Empire had formally ended in 476. The...
by Helen Kain | Apr 4, 2026 | Carousel Fascinating People, Early Middle Ages (410-1066), Fascinating People
Some rulers inherit a system and try to preserve it. Others inherit fragments and attempt to rebuild what has been lost. In the 6th century, Justinian I chose the second path. An Empire That Had Not Disappeared By the time Justinian came to power in 527, Rome had not...
by Helen Kain | Mar 29, 2026 | Carousel Fascinating People, Fascinating People
In the grand theatre of British peerage, few titles have seen more curtain calls than that of the Earl of Leicester. Created no fewer than seven official times between the Norman Conquest and the Victorian Age — and arguably worn de facto by one of England’s...
