This site has grown out of my experiences of pretending to be a Tudor at Kentwell Hall. Each year, a different historical year is brought to life, with the relevant slice of history forming the backdrop to everyday life. Who is on the throne? Are we at war? And so on. I also wanted to look at the history that my grandparents lived through, spanning the end of the Victorian era through to the spread of the internet.

This site tries to show how a fictitious person fits into the sweep of history. What events have they lived through? It is a bit like The Mindset List, but for the more distant past. It is currently based on English history, covering the Tudor period and the 20th Century. It has events from 2nd April 1441 (Foundation of King's College, Cambridge) to 2012 (Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II) - you can get a bit more detail about what it knows. It tries to be objective, similar to Wikipedia. There are many good and bad things in our history, and I try to not pass judgment either way. It doesn't go into details; there are many excellent resources for more depth and colour. For Tudor things I recommend Hogwash Tudor History and Tudor Tailor. For world history (including Mongols) presented in a nice way, I recommend Crash Course World History on YouTube.

If the list of events displayed on the main page is plain white (and not stripey), then you're probably using an old version of Internet Explorer. You will find this site, and possibly many other sites, nicer if you upgrade to a later version of Internet Explorer, or to another browser such as Firefox or Chrome.

This site has been authentically hand-stitched using period HTML, Javascript, PHP, CSS and SQL, even where it doesn't show.

If you spot anything that's wrong, or have any ideas for how the site could be better, then I would love to hear from you via .

A woodsman and his boy