16 Jun 2024
Anyone listening carefully to the opening of Awful Auntie will have spotted a mention of Maxstoke Castle. I included it because the castle is only five minutes from where I live in Warwickshire, and I was taken as a child to look around. I’ve been wanting to visit again ever since. Each year they have an open day – and I am always (always) on tour. Today we were performing in Liverpool, so I assumed I wouldn’t make it, but for the first time in history, the M6 was clear all the way and I arrived an hour before closing. Except they’d sold out. So I begged. And they let me in. It’s an amazing place, still occupied by the same family who’ve lived there since the 1600’s. And best of all – they have the chair on which King Henry VII was crowned after the Battle of Bosworth. Which given I am about to perform Terrible Tudors in town is lovely timing. I am now a happy man.