Great news!  More here:

http://www.holberg.uib.no/en/natalie-zemon-davis.html

There is also a Facebook Group which is keeping track of developments and links available here.

You can sign the petition here: http://www.petitiononline.com/spkcl10/petition.html

If you want to write to King’s about this issue the person to write to is: Professor Rick Trainor, The Principal, King’s College, The Strand, London WC2R 2LS and copy to Professor Jan Palmowski, Head of the School of Arts and Humanities.

If you want to find out more about palaeography and why it’s so important, try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palaeography. There are some useful links there, too.

You can find out more about the day at http://www.followamuseum.com/. A list of Twittering museums is available at http://www.followamuseum.com/countries.html.

Or you can follow some museums already listed at http://twitter.com/BirkbeckEMS/museums-galleries. (I’ll be adding to this throughout February so if you know of any museums that are likely to offer items of early modern interest do let me know!)

Have you seen any of these items?

Bust of Poussin’s wife
A terracotta bust of Anne Marie Dughet, the wife of the artist Nicolas Poussin, by Francois Duquesnoy, circa 1630. Bought in 1842 auction by John P Beavan.

Wedgwood Plate
A set of 12 Wedgwood plates, featuring cameos of brown, white and blue festoons, designed by Lady Diana Beauclerk, circa 1777.

Henry VIII’s dagger
Of Turkish design, with a steel blade damasked in gold and a case embellished with diamonds and rubies (date unknown). In the 1842 auction, it was bought by the actor Charles Kean, who is said to have used it on stage. It was sold at Christie’s in 1898 to someone named “Haigham”.

Bust of Vespasian
Ancient Roman basalt bust of the Emperor Vespasian, formerly in 10 Downing Street and later at Strawberry Hill. The bust was last recorded at Christie’s in 1882 where it was sold by the Duke of Hamilton.

Gothic dining table
Commissioned by Horace Walpole in 1754, designed by Richard Bentley, the surface of the table is made of Sicilian Jasper. Last recorded in 1953 in the collection of the antiquarian HL Bradfer-Lawrence, of Ripon, Yorks, who died in 1965.

Read the full story here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/6889607/Hunt-begins-for-lost-Horace-Walpole-treasures-at-Strawberry-Hill.html

The US version of the Walpole exhibition is on show at the Yale Center for British Art until 3 January.

Find out more at The Art Newspaper.

The exhibition catalogue is available to fill the gap before the V&A version opens.

You can find out more about the Strawberry Hill Trust here: http://strawberryhilltrust.org/

Read the story here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/6349023/Science-Museum-unearths-unknown-portrait-of-Medici-lord.html

Meanwhile, A previously unknown portrait by Leonardo da Vinci potentially worth tens of millions of pounds is thought to have been discovered thanks to a fingerprint.

Find out more here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/6309942/Leonardo-da-Vinci-picture-worth-millions-revealed-by-a-fingerprint.html

Thanks to Robin for alerting me to these!

The New Scientist has revealed the secret behind the Mona Lisa’s famous expression. Leonardo knew exactly what he was doing when he created the dynamic portrait. Read the story here:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18019-mona-lisas-smile-a-mystery-no-more.html.

Winston Churchill reputedly summed up naval tradition as “nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash”, but a trove of objects discovered in the wreck of the Tudor warship Mary Rose suggests that one could also add “the latest fashions and personal grooming”.

Artefacts recovered from the remains of the vessel but never put on display owing to lack of space show that some of the men on board the flagship of Henry VIII’s navy possessed luxuries that would be considered excessive even by modern sailors.

A manicure set, a case for a vanity mirror, a “manbag” and a thigh boot are some of 18,000 objects that have remained in storage since they were recovered from the sea bed almost 30 years ago because the present museum in Portsmouth is too small.

The public will get their first opportunity to see them in 2012, provided that the Mary Rose Trust can raise the final £1 million it needs from a public appeal for the £35 million project.

Read the rest of the story from The Times here

Find out more about the museum and the appeal here:
Mary Rose Appeal.

The 400-year-old mystery of whether William Shakespeare was the author of an unattributed play about Edward III may have been solved by a computer program designed to detect plagiarism.

Sir Brian Vickers, an authority on Shakespeare at the Institute of English Studies at the University of London, believes that a comparison of phrases used in The Reign of King Edward III with Shakespeare’s early works proves conclusively that the Bard wrote the play in collaboration with Thomas Kyd, one of the most popular playwrights of his day.

Read more here.

First, a lost painting by Ludovico Mazzolino aka Mazzolino da Ferrara dating from 1522 has been found in a Cheltenham pensioner’s collection. It was packed away in 1950. The painting will be sold by auction. See the Duke’s auction page here: http://www.dukes-auctions.com/Catalogues/PF011009/page8.html. (The painting is Lot 251.)

You can find the whole story here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/6210993/Lost-Renaissance-masterpiece-discovered-after-60-years.html.

Also, in the news. Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon has launched an appeal for funds to repair a wooden beam which is crumbling directly above the final resting place of William Shakespeare. The fault was discovered as part of ongoing structural repairs and will cost £50,000 to fix. The BBC story is here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/coventry_warwickshire/8266160.stm

You can find out more about the repairs at the Friends of Shakespeare’s Church website: http://www.shakespeareschurch.org/safety-warning-news.htm. And, more importantly, you can make a donation here:
http://www.shakespeareschurch.org/donation.htm.

Thanks for these, Robin!

Friday 18 September, 11am to 5:30pm
Celebrate Johnson’s 300th birthday by paying a trip to the House where he compiled his Dictionary of the English Language. Open for free all day.

Help youself to some birthday cake (whilst stocks last), experience writing with a quill pen, kids can try on historical costumes and play eighteenth-century games….all welcome.

The party continues on Saturday with Free Opening for Open House Weekend
Saturday 19 September, 11am to 5:30pm
Part of Open House weekend, open for free all day

Dr Johnson’s House is at 17 Gough Square, London EC4A 3DE

For all events marking the tercentenary of Johnson’s birth see
www.johnson2009.org.

Also see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8255720.stm for the reasons why Johnson’s Dictionary was so significant.

BLACKSMITH Stephen Mather has forged a memorial to one of the North East’s bloodiest battles. Steel gates which incorporate images from the Battle of Flodden in 1513 will be installed at the site where the English army camped before and after their victory over the Scots.
…
Its Flodden links are only part of the site’s rich history. It was the medieval home of the Muschamp family and in 1341 a licence to crenellate (to fortify a building) was granted to Thomas de Muschamp, In 1415 a tower was recorded and in 1801 work began on the present castle-style mansion.
…
THE gates are being installed as planning starts on how to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Flodden in four years’ time. In just three hours of fighting at Flodden, near the village of Branxton, 15,000 men were killed. The battle claimed the lives of the Scots King James IV, most of his accompanying nobility and 10,000 of their countrymen.

Flodden saw the last effective mass use of the English longbow. It also set in motion a series of events that would contribute within 80 years to the union of the English and Scottish crowns.

You can read the whole story here: http://www.journallive.co.uk/north-east-news/todays-news/2009/09/03/blacksmith-forges-memorial-to-battle-of-flodden-61634-24595770/.