In Popular Culture
The preparations of the Armada and the Battle of Gravelines form the backdrop of two graphic novels in Bob de Moors "Cori le Moussaillon" (Les Espions de la Reine and Le Dragon des Mers'). In them, Cori the cabin boy works as a spy in the Armada for the English.
The Armada and intrigues surrounding its threat to England form the backdrop of the films Fire Over England (1937), with Laurence Olivier and Flora Robson, and The Sea Hawk with Errol Flynn.
The Battle of Gravelines and the subsequent chase around the northern coast of Scotland form the climax of Charles Kingsley's 1855 novel Westward Ho!, which in 1925 became the first novel to be adapted into a radio drama by BBC.
In golf, Seve Ballesteros and José María Olazábal, who had a Ryder Cup record of 11–2–2 as a team—the best record for a pairing in the history of the competition—came to be called the "Spanish Armada".
The Battle of Gravelines is the climax of the 2007 film, Elizabeth: The Golden Age starring Cate Blanchett and Clive Owen.
Australian band "Paper Boat Armada" take their name from the stories of "The invincible Spanish Armada"
In the twentieth season of The Simpsons, an episode depicts the reason for the Armada's attack as Queen Elizabeth's rebuff of the King of Spain. Homer Simpson (as Walter Raleigh) accidentally sets the only English ship on fire; then collides with the Armada, setting all their ships on fire, creating victory for England.
The Final Jeopardy! response on 20 May 2009 on Jeopardy! was "The Spanish Armada". The clue was "It was the 'they' in the medal issued by Elizabeth I reading, 'God breathed and they were scattered.'"
Winston Graham wrote a history of "The Spanish Armadas" and a historical novel, The Grove of Eagles, based on it - the plural "Armadas" referring to a lesser-known second attempt by Philip II of Spain to conquer England during 1598, which Graham argued was better planned and organized than the famous one of 1588 but was foiled by a fierce storm scattering the Spanish ships and sinking many of them.
Several science fiction writers have published variant descriptions of how history might have proceeded had the Spanish Armada won, including John Brunner ("Times Without Number", 1962), Keith Roberts ("Pavane", 1969) and Harry Turtledove ("Ruled Britannia" 2002).
Read more about this topic: Spanish Armada
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead-drunk in the street, carried to the duke’s house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke’s bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Any historian of the literature of the modern age will take virtually for granted the adversary intention, the actually subversive intention, that characterizes modern writing—he will perceive its clear purpose of detaching the reader from the habits of thought and feeling that the larger culture imposes, of giving him a ground and a vantage point from which to judge and condemn, and perhaps revise, the culture that produces him.”
—Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)