The Terrible Tudors is a fabulous book in the Horrible Histories series, but I like Durham Cathedral’s version better- the Tudors were terrifically interesting. There’s a new exhibition just opening at the cathedral to show off some of the amazing objects in their collections while also explaining why the Tudor dynasty were so very important Read More …
Author: Elizabeth Biggs
Parker on the Web is here!
I came back from the holidays last week to the exciting news that another digitisation project is complete- the Parker Library on the Web is now freely available. It’s a fabulously beautiful collection, with lots of really stunning manuscripts, so it’s well worth a virtual browse through their books. Durham, oddly is only represented Read More …
Feeding the Reformation
I’m going to wander away slightly from the Durham library this week and look at a wonderful set of records from London’s National Archives. Despite the distance to London (it could take a week or more on horseback), Durham’s bishop Cuthbert Tunstall spent quite a lot of the 1530s and 1540s travelling back and forth Read More …
A 400 year plus tenure really isn’t bad
This is a shorter blog post this week, but one that comes out of a conversation I had a couple of weeks ago, when Alec Ryrie pointed out that there have only ever been two bishops of Berwick. I’ve continued to think about Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall and the people he knew, particularly the monks Read More …
Working between Catalogues
This is a quick and belated blog for this week as I’ve been travelling to find yet more Durham books that are now elsewhere. I’m planning to write about them in the future, but for today I want think about two handwritten sets of lists that are still safely in Durham. Last week, Matthew wrote Read More …
Chasing Durham Books around the Country
It’s lovely to be back in Durham just as the new academic year starts and it’s a good moment to pause and think about what I’ve been doing so far. I’ve spent the summer wandering around the country looking for books that used to belong to priests connected to the cathedral or to the cathedral Read More …
Whose book was it anyway?
I’m very lucky that I get to look at a huge number of really beautiful books from Durham and call it work. One of my favourites so far is this eleventh-century gradual. It’s not the most spectacular book I’ve worked with, but it’s pretty special nonetheless. Click through the images at that link and I hope Read More …
Luther at Durham
2017 marks five hundred years since Martin Luther (supposedly) nailed his famous theses to the church door in Wittenberg and so set off the set of conflicts and changes in the European Church that we now call the Reformation. In 1517 Durham was still a monastery. Luther’s writings first really reached England in 1519, in Read More …
Tunstall in the Library
The last Catholic bishop of Durham, Cuthbert Tunstall, liked to promote his family. Most of those men who can be identified as being in his service were related to him. Tunstall was born in 1474 at Hackfurth in Yorkshire, and his family correspondingly were also from the north-east as well as Lancashire. After years Read More …
Working in the Cathedral
It feels appropriate to be writing this brief post in today’s cathedral library, the Sharp Library, underneath the immense wooden timbers of the roof in the old monastic dormitory. I’m looking up at the same beamed ceiling that all the monks at Durham would have known although the current windows and the book-presses are all Read More …