For many years now I have been an infrequent reader of Murrey and Blue, a blog about medieval history written from a Ricardian perspective. Its themes and contents overlapped with my interests a fair bit, especially heraldry – the very name refers to the House of York’s livery colours. It combined a catty, snarky writing style with a great deal of detailed historical analysis and research.

The blog dates back to January 2014 and, unlike mine, has had many contributing authors over the decade. Late last month ViscountessW, one of the more prolific contributors, announced that following the death of the owner Stephen Lark and the looming, inevitable, expiration of the site’s WordPress plan, the blog has ceased operations. Happily a new incarnation of the blog is already in existence, but the fate of the eleven-year back-catalogue of old articles is not known.

I should say that while I enjoyed the content of Murrey and Blue, I’ve never been keen on it from a design perspective – the original theme used was an old one and a bit crude, but it was at least functional. At some point between March and May 2021 it was changed to something that looked a little more modern but which lacked a sense of structure and texture as well as being hard to navigate. The new website looks even worse in that regard, but I hope this is just its larval stage and a better theme will be chosen soon.