27/02/2026

FRIDAY | FEB 27, 2026

23

LYFE

Shakespearean holiday

O N a cloudy winter’s day, visitors stream into what was once William Shakespeare’s childhood home in Stratford-upon-Avon and the nearby Anne Hathaway’s cottage, family residence of the bard’s wife. Hathaway’s cottage is one of the settings for the Bafta and Oscar best film contender Hamnet , and the movie’s success is drawing a new wave of tourists to Shakespeare sites in the town in central England, reported Reuters. Shakespeare’s Birthplace is the house the young William once lived in and where his father worked as a glove maker, while Hathaway’s cottage is where he would have visited his future wife early in their relationship. Typically, around 250,000 visitors, from the UK, Europe, the US, China and elsewhere, walk through the locations each year, according to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. The charity looks o Oscar contender Hamnet boosts tourism at playwright’s heritage sites

A view of Shakespeare’s Birthplace, where the world’s most famous bard was raised and his father worked as a glove maker.

continue as we go throughout the year,” Richard Paterson, COO for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, said. “They particularly want to look (at) Hathaway’s cottage and the specifics around how the family engaged in the spaces and the landscape in and around the cottage... you can see why he would have been inspired.” Hamnet had 11 nominations at the British Bafta awards, including best film and leading actress for Jessie Buckley, who plays Agnes. It also has eight Oscar nominations, with Buckley seen as the frontrunner

after Shakespeare heritage sites, which also include Shakespeare’s New Place, the site of the Stratford home where the bard died in 1616. Visitors are flocking in this year thanks to Hamnet , the film based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel, which gives a fictional account of the relationship between Shakespeare and Hathaway, also known as Agnes, and the death of their 11-year-old son Hamnet in 1596. “Visitor numbers have increased by about 15% to 20% across all sites since the film was released back in January. I think that will only

A statue of Shakespeare stands outside Shakespeare’s Birthplace, his childhood home in Stratford-upon-Avon.

to win best actress. Hamnet is set in Stratford-upon-Avon and London, although it was not filmed in Stratford. It sees Paul Mescal’s young Shakespeare fall for Agnes while teaching Latin to pay off his father’s debts. The drama, seen mainly through Agnes’s eyes, focuses on their life together and grief over Hamnet’s death, leading Shakespeare to write Hamlet . “Shakespeare... is notoriously enigmatic. He writes about humanity, about feeling, about emotion, about conflict, but where do we understand who he is in that story?” said Charlotte Scott, a professor of Shakespeare studies and interim director of collections, learning and research at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. “And that’s driven people creative and otherwise for hundreds and hundreds of years. Where is Shakespeare’s heart? And this is

what the film I think has so beautifully opened up.” Little is known about how the couple met. Shakespeare was 18 and Hathaway 26 when they married in 1582. Daughter Susanna arrived in 1583 and twins Judith and Hamnet in 1585. The film acknowledges the names Hamnet and Hamlet were interchangeable back then. While grief is a dominant theme, audiences also see Shakespeare in love and as a father. Scott said: “A lot of people will see this film not necessarily having... had any kind of relationship with Shakespeare. “So people will come to this film, I hope and find a new way of accessing Shakespeare that is about creativity, that is about understanding storytelling as a constant process of regeneration, but also crucially, looking at it from that kind of emotive angle.”

Hathaway’s cottage, the family home of Shakespeare’s wife. – PICS FROM REUTERS

British Museum raises £3.5 million to secure Henry VIII heart pendant THE British Museum announced it had raised £3.5 million (RM18.4 million) to buy a gold heart pendant linked to Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon, with a crowdfunding campaign making up more than 10% of the total. “This beautiful survivor tells us about a piece of English history few of us knew, but in which we can all now share,” said British Museum director Nicholas Cullinan. ultimately annulled in 1533,” the museum said in a press release. The museum’s research showed that the pendant could have been created to mark the betrothal of their daughter Princess Mary to the French heir apparent in 1518.

According to the institution, “almost no other objects survive that celebrate Henry and Catherine’s relationship, most having been lost over time”. The 24-carat-gold pendant displays a white and red Tudor rose, a symbol of Henry’s dynasty, entwined with a pomegranate, which was Catherine’s personal emblem. A banner below reads “tousiors”, the old French word for “always”, and the reverse of the pendant shows the letters “H” and “K” – thought to refer to the king and his first wife. “The heart shows the luxury of Henry VIII’s earlier reign and the strength of their union before it was

It was discovered by a cafe owner from Birmingham who was using a metal detector at the site of a dried-up pond in Warwickshire, northwest of London, in 2019. The British Museum, which has the largest permanent collection in the world, launched a fundraising campaign in October to keep the pendant on permanent display and prevent it from being acquired by a private collector. Over 45,000 people gave individual donations to the appeal amounting to £380,000, with the National Heritage Memorial Fund awarding £1.75 million. – AFP

The pendant known as the Tudor Heart is “the only piece of jewellery of its kind” from Henry VIII’s 24-year-long marriage to Catherine of Aragon, the museum said. The marriage ended acrimoniously in 1533 with Henry VIII annulling the union and eventually splitting from the Roman Catholic Church and going on to have five other ill-fated marriages. The British Museum said it had secured funding “to acquire the Tudor Heart pendant for its permanent collection, ensuring it will be on public display for generations to come”.

The Tudor Heart, pictured in a display at the British Museum in central London. – AFPPIC