YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED
Is there anything you’re yearning to know? Send your questions, on any subject, to the contacts given below, and we will do our best to answer them...
QWhat happened to Thomas Cromwell’s son and nephew after his execution? How was Oliver Cromwell related to them?
AWhen Thomas was still in Henry VIII’s good books, his son, Gregory, married Jane Seymour’s sister. So not only was Gregory married to the king’s sister-in-law, he was uncle to Edward VI, Henry’s only legitimate son.
Thomas was beheaded in 1540, but Gregory kept royal favour thanks to his wife and a grovelling letter from theTower.A few months later, he became Baron Cromwell and was handed some of his father’s lands that had reverted to the crown, including Launde Abbey in Leicestershire, which was his main home. He had five children and was one of the richest landowners in the Midlands when he died suddenly of a sweating sickness in 1551.
Thomas’s nephew Richard was his sister’s son, but he lived with him and took on the Cromwell name. Richard was a skilled soldier and jouster – he impressed HenryVIII so much at a tournament that he knighted him and gave him his diamond ring, which would feature on his crest.
Again, Richard continued to prosper at court despite openly mourning his uncle. He cashed in on the dissolution of the monasteries, gained lands in Cambridgeshire and was an MP. He died in 1544.The controversial Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell was his great-grandson.
Gregory and Richard’s close relationship with Thomas came through in the BBC adaptation of Wolf Hall, which starred Mark Rylance and Damian Lewis.
Gregory was played by Spiderman actor Tom Holland, with Joss Porter as Richard.
QI dug out a dusty game of tiddlywinks to play this week with my family during lockdown. How did that game come about? Mark Craven, Selby, NorthYorkshire
ATiddlywinks first took off as aVictorian parlour game. It was patented in 1888 by bank clerk Joseph Fincher, although versions existed before then.Tiddlywink was a slang term for an unlicensed pub or a small drink.
It started off as a serious game, and found fans in America. But the modern version can be dated to the 1950s, when Cambridge University set up tournaments.
During its peak in the 1960s, nearly 40 universities were playing in Britain.A disc called a squidger is used to play the winks and the aim is to secure the highest number of points, or tiddlies. Moves include the squop, boondock, Carnovsky and gromp.
There is even a John Lennon Memorial Shot – which is a rare combination of a boondock and a squop.
The British Universities Championship was established by Prince Philip in 1961 – the Silver Wink. For those involved, it is a game of tactics and strategy, not merely flipping plastic in a pot.
Since 2000, the world singles championship has been dominated by American Larry Kahn and Britain’s Patrick Barrie, who are seen as the Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic of the game.
QGertrude Bell fascinates me and I would like to know more about the film that was made about her called Queen of the Desert. Ivan Rhodes, Borrowash, Derby
AExplorer Gertrude Bell was a remarkable woman in a man’s world and has been called the female Lawrence of Arabia. But unlike TE Lawrence, she has yet to have her story told in a box-office hit so has not received the recognition she deserves.
Nicole Kidman did star as Bell in Werner Herzog’s film The Queen Of The Desert, but the film bombed – it cost £30million to make but brought in less than £2million at the box office. It premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2015 but only got a tiny release in the US in 2017 after lukewarm reviews.
It tells the true story of how Bell traded her privileged life in Redcar in the North East to explore the deserts of the Middle East in the early 1900s.
She was fluent in Persian and Arabic and in 1921, after the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War, Winston Churchill invited her to Cairo, where she drew up the boundaries of the country that became Iraq.
TE Lawrence was there, too, but she was the only woman among the 40 delegates. She was pivotal in theWest’s understanding of the region, helped choose Iraq’s first ruler and founded its first museum. You should also watch the 2016 documentary about her early life, Letters From Baghdad, which is voiced by Tilda Swinton.
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