On Saturday 9 July 1575, at about 8pm, Elizabeth I arrived on horseback at Kenilworth Castle, the Warwickshire power base of her favourite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. For nearly three weeks, the Queen, ladies-in-waiting and courtiers were housed in the castle and entertained by Dudley with music, masques, dancing, tilting, hunting and bear baiting. At the banquets, guests consumed up to 40 barrels of beer and 16 barrels of wine per day. The revels constituted Dudley’s last attempt – after 15 years of trying – to win the Queen’s hand.

Dr Gillian White specialises in the history and visual arts of late medieval and sixteenth-century England. After beginning her career at the Warwickshire Museum, she worked for the National Trust as Curator/Collections Manager at Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire, about which she wrote her PhD at Warwick University. Since then she has taught part-time at Leicester University in the Centre for the Study of the Country House and continues to teach History of Art in the Department of Continuing Education at Oxford University and elsewhere.

This is an online talk - a Zoom link will be sent out to all members in advance of the event.