The lecture title borrows William Shakespeare's stirring words from King Richard II and Horace Walpole's vivid description of a pearl-laden Queen Elizabeth I. Medieval and Tudor monarchs understood that the visual beauty and rarity of precious gem-stones, including luminous sapphires, rubies and spinels alongside lustrous pearls and clear rock crystal, expressed and enhanced their regal power and status. Resplendence and awe-inspiring magnificence transcend the passage of time in portraits of monarchs from King Richard II in the Wilton Diptych to Queen Elizabeth I in Nicholas Hilliard's painted miniatures. Hilliard himself trained as a goldsmith and the technical brilliance of other anonymous masters of this craft is still evidenced in surviving jewels such as Princess Blanche's dazzling crown, the Royal Gold Cup in the British Museum and Henry V's rock crystal sceptre linked to the City of London and the Battle of Agincourt. Tracing the sources of the stones in distant lands, the lecture follows a journey from the gem-stone mines of Asia, the pearl fisheries of the Persian Gulf, mountains with crystal mines and freshwater pearls from the rivers of Scotland, to the merchants of Venice and Bruges, Medieval markets in Avignon and Champagne and on to the goldsmiths of Paris and London.

Anne is a lecturer at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum and the Queen’s Gallery. She is a visiting lecturer for Regent's University, Sotheby's Institute and SOAS. Since 2008, she has been a member of the London faculty of Eckerd College, Florida, teaching Art History and is also an accredited Arts Society lecturer. For ten years she guided private evening tours of the State Rooms at Buckingham Palace. She lectures extensively for private groups, guides museum tours in London and has lectured on William Morris for the British Council and British Higher School of Art and Design in Moscow.  

After studying Modern History at Durham University, she trained and became a senior specialist in ceramics at the head offices in London of Bonhams (1981-1986) and Christie's (1987-1995). From 1995 to 2002, she was resident in Shanghai, China and gave lectures on the history of the China trade and European Chinoiserie to the international community of diplomats and expatriates in Shanghai and Beijing. On returning to London in 2002, she worked on a short project cataloguing Chinese ceramics at Kensington Palace and became Hon Membership Secretary and Treasurer of the French Porcelain Society.