'We Are Bess" Dr Suzannah Lipscomb's BRAND NEW exhibition on Bess of Hardwick 

I wrote to Suzannah about it would be great to do a program on Hardwick Hall on Twitter I had a reply a couple of days later, Suzannah replied Gosh that would be great ! Low and behold Suzannah does one. My claim to fame.

I popped in last week. It's a great exhibition. The modern photos intermingled with the old paintings hung on the wall really shake you up. They are essentially a direct modern equivalent aren't they? To think, only 400 years ago somebody is looking at a new painting of Bess with the same familiarity I had for that photo of Dame Mary Beard I looked at eight long days ago...

This really is a great exhibit. Because women everywhere need their voices heard.

What a fantastic project. Can’t wait to go and see it

I would love to visit Hardwick hall! Maybe one day! What an amazing exhibition!

Bess was the richest and most powerful woman in late Tudor England after the Queen, and her descendants fill many noble houses and the current Royal Family. Her main line of heirs became the most politically powerful noble family through the last four centuries. Bess had friends in the highest places, people went out of their way to help her financially and politically, and she had a fortune via the dissolution of the monasteries, which may have been the most destructive upheaval ever in England. Bess was more like a Tudor Margaret Thatcher (stern woman, not known to joke, held power for herself, 'If you can run a household you can run a country' Thatcher said) meets Elizabeth Taylor -- many marriages and a lot of money involved. All about as far from what this exhibition represents socially, politically and culturally as you can possibly imagine. Am I wrong?

I just found out she is my lots of great grandmother!!!!!

How do the paintings and the pictures hanged to the walls and tapisserie ?

Today she be label a gold digger.. Shows girl power rules in a clever few even in past history where it was a MANS world more so then. Today most western women has easy compare with her.

Um, no, "we" are _not_ Bess. People go to Hardwick Hall because they're fascinated by history, not because they crave the perspective of the self-important "woke" brigade. To hang those ghastly photographs in this historic place and equate Bess of Hardwick to the likes of (shudder) Cathy Newman is, frankly, desecration. Get _over_ yourselves already.

So she is cute

There is no end to modern "woke" narcissism.