Robin, Hudds

I’m delighted to have my Robin Hood artwork featured in an exhibition, closing next Friday, at Huddersfield University alongside – amongst others – Louis Zansky’s comic strip version. It was first published in 1942 in what was then the ‘Classic Comics’ series so, not surprisingly, there’s more than a hint of Errol Flynn’s 1938 Technicolor movie, The Adventures of Robin Hood.

Dr Todd Borlik and students in the School of Arts and Humanities have examined Robin Hood in history and literature, especially in the early ballads set in Yorkshire locations such as Sayles and Barnsdale near Pontefract.

My Walks in Robin Hood’s Yorkshire tours locations mentioned in the ballads and follows the career of a Robert Hode who features in the Manor Court Rolls of Wakefield. It’s likely that he was outlawed after fighting on the side of the rebels – led by Thomas of Lancaster, the Lord of the Manor of Wakefield at the time – at the Battle of Boroughbridge in 1322.

Robin Hood at Kirklees Priory — Robin Hood and Little John at Kirklees Priory and my map from the Hartshead walk in ‘Walks in Robin Hood’s Yorkshire’.

Kirklees Priory is the scene of the story of Robin Hood’s death at the hands of his cousin, the Prioress and her lover Roger of Doncaster, who, according to a caption in the exhibition, may actually have been a ‘Roger of Huddersfield’.