Themis-Athena's Garden of Books

Thomas Penn – Winter King: The Dawn of the Tudor Age

Neil MacGregor – Shakespeare's Restless World: A Portrait of an Era in Twenty Objects

Julian Curry (ed.) – Shakespeare on Stage: Thirteen Leading Actors on Thirteen Key Roles (interviews with, inter alia, Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Derek Jacobi, Jude Law, Ian McKellen, Helen Mirren, Kevin Spacey and Patrick Stewart)

Hilary Mantel – Wolf Hall & Bring Up the Bodies: Dramatized Version

Ian Mortimer – The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England's Self-Made King

William Shakespeare – Twelfth Night: 2012 Globe Theatre Production (DVD) (an all male production starring, inter alia, Mark Rylance as Olivia and Stephen Fry as Malvolio – I'd seen that production live at the Globe in 2012 and had been waiting ever since for the DVD to come out ... Best "Twelfth Night" ever!)

William Shakespeare – Henry IV, Parts I & II: Music and Speeches from the 2014 Royal Shakespeare Company Production directed by Gregory Doran (CD)

Jonathan Bate – Soul of the Age: The Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare

Dan Jones – The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England

Margaret Campbell Barnes – Within the Hollow Crown: A Valiant King's Struggle to Save His Country, His Dynasty, and His Love

Eleanor Catton – The Luminaries

Ian Rankin – Saints of the Shadow Bible

George R.R. Martin – A Game of Thrones

George R.R. Martin – A Clash of Kings

Maritime Greenwich

Royal Observatory Greenwich (guide)

... plus 4 Shakespearean plays in 4 days:

Antony & Cleopatra (Globe Theatre, London – with BrokenTune [waves] – starring Eve Best as Cleopatra, Clive Wood as Antony and Phil Daniels as Enobarbus)*

Henry IV, Part 1 (RSC, Stratford, starring Jasper Britton as Henry IV, Antony Sher as Falstaff, Alex Hassell/Sam Marks as Prince Hal,** and Paola Dionisotti as Mistress Quickly)

Henry IV, Part 2 (RSC, Stratford, starring the above plus Oliver Ford Davies as Justice Shallow)

Macbeth (The HandleBards – totally hilarious.  Separate post to come!)

* BT also spotted Martin Shaw in the audience, in a middle gallery section right across from us ... (from which moment onwards our attention was, err, divided between the stage and the middle gallery).

** Sam Marks in the performances I saw – I later learned that he'd had all of 20 minutes' notice that it would be him and not Alex Hassell playing ... and boy, did he acquit himself marvelously!