Rosemary Hill

speaker

490 appearances 4 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 7 Sep

Rosemary Hill’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.

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Close Readings · London Revisited: The Road to Civil War · 13 Jul 2026 podcast

I think at this point, it's quite interesting that, I mean, it was a Catholic plot against a Protestant king.

But one of the extenuating circumstances that Guy Fawkes thought might win him popularity but didn't

was he claimed it was because James was Scottish, that it was an anti-Scottish plot, which it wasn't.

But I think it's perhaps interesting that he thought that might be resonant with some people.

So, Westminster hasn't been blown up, but on the other hand, it's looking a bit ramshackle because the court and the centre of courtly life has moved up to Whitehall to the palace there, Henry VIII's palace, not much altered by Elizabeth, and it becomes a centre of art and of entertainment, and James VI and I are

It's important perhaps to explain that by this stage, Henry VIII had built two gates across Whitehall.

So the actual carriageway was quite narrow.

You went through the King's Gate and the Holbein Gate, which was a very elaborate gate, which had nothing directly to do with Holbein, but it acquired that name.

And the palace itself, which was enormous, but rather ramshackle, went across the road, over the top on these gates,

And James now landscaped what became St.

James's Park and opened up that space.

And James had a new banqueting house built in 1607.

There was one there before, but it was wood and it was not the look for the new monarchy.

So he had a new one built in stone on classical principles.

The problem with following classical principles too precisely is that you get basically a Greek temple inside an English building.

And there seems to have been...

There are drawings of it.

It seems to have been rather inconvenient because the columns came in front of the windows.

I mean, banqueting, of course, wasn't then what we think of now, which is something like the Lord Mayor's Banquet and hundreds of people all sitting down with knives and forks.

The banquet was an entertainment with refreshments of a much, in food terms, much lighter, but in terms of the entertainment, often lighter.

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