January 31, 2023 • 53 mins
In the summer of 1346, English soldiers landed at Normandy and mounted a campaign that would become one of the most famous in the Hundred Years War. Historian Dan Jones joins the podcast again to talk about Edward III, the Black Prince, and his new novel, ESSEX DOGS.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised.
I'm very excited to be joined for this very special
episode by my friend, amazing historian Dan Jones, who's joining
us via via seamless internet technology from across the pond
(00:21):
in England. Damn, thank you for joining me. It's absolutely
my pleasure. We like was so good at technology that
this was set up. We didn't was the easiest thing.
We knew how to do. Our headphones, our microphones. Both
of us just nailed it immediately first try. I definitely
had the microphone thing lockdown? Did you my end? Contrary
to what people are saying, my microphone was on the
(00:43):
entire time. It was fully, fully turned on. That wasn't
the mistake I was making. You were brought back on
this podcast by popular demand, that the people demanded you,
and so we had to bring you back. But you
were the Charles the second of podcast guests. Thank you
very much. That's probably my favorite Charles of all the three.
(01:03):
Of all the three. So I was I was asking
you before we started, how how is the new king
over there? Well? I think that you guys are thinking
about it a little bit more than we are. We
we did, we had quite a lot of it last year,
and now we're just The coronation will be along in
a few months time, and I think we'll have another
that'll go at it then. But by and large, no
one's playing it that much attention. I think. I think
(01:25):
of the two of us, I am the only one
who read Prince Harry's book. Is that true? That is true,
assuming you did read it. I didn't read it. I
have no reason to doubt you. And it's the sort
of thing you would do that like professionally or actually curious.
They sent me a copy, so this is full disclosure.
As I got a copy for free, I don't know
(01:45):
if I would have like shelled out for it. And
then I was just curious as a document. I was
just like, so, what is this guy really saying? Did
you find out? By the end of the book. Yes,
I think he's past off, isn't it. He's really mad
and I think he had a very sad family life.
I felt bad for him by the end of it.
I was like, it must have been really lonely. Your
(02:07):
dad never hugging you like that would have been awful,
But I do kind of think he's mad about the
wrong things a little bit, like he's holding these family
grudges and I feel sorry for him, but it also
feels like, I don't know if he realizes it's not
that's not like the main problem with the monarchy. Yeah,
it does seem to be quite um. He does seem
(02:28):
to have misconstrued and misconceived quite a lot of things
that you would have thought like by the time you
get to around the age of forty. He's a little
bit younger than me, but you know, by the age
of forty ish, you're supposed to have just started to
work out certain things about your life situation. And he
seems to have got some of them wrong, and the
ones that he hasn't got wrong, he's reacted to in
a really bad way. It does seem as though he's
(02:51):
the only one in this family who's gotten therapy, and
so clearly a therapist is like it would have been
nice if your dad hugged you, and then he's like yes,
and then really decided to write a book about it.
But was this a specialist therapist? Because I think it's
like a certain you need a special like one that
just does royals really like, basically you I could do it.
(03:12):
You seem you seem like you should be in the
person that would do therapy, because you'd probably think about
this more than than a normal therapist. It's true of
the category of case. Do you know the most deranged
thing that I've ever said out loud in my life
to my husband? I said, I said the words, and
I meant it is there's the really messed up part.
I said, if I had married into the royal family,
(03:34):
I would have been able to hack it. Like I
would have been able to do it. I can follow
rules really well. I would wear that right now, polished colors.
I wouldn't read the news. I would just like curtsy
the right way. I would follow all the rules. But
you've also done your research, like this is what I'm saying.
I don't. I would have known when I was getting
into I think, so do you? What do you wanted
(03:55):
to do it? I mean absolutely think yourskin seems great,
and like I'm not sure you harry a fit or whatever,
But like, would you in in the abstract have wanted
that job at any level? No, it's to me that
the job of being a royal. It seems like you
are quietly drinking all day with people I don't know
if I would like, I'm not a big drinker. And
also you have to go to a lot of like
(04:16):
ceremonial hospital openings. It feels like you're going to like
three graduation ceremonies a day, and your kid is never graduating. Right,
the job seems boring. I totally agree, And yet there
is a small, like distinct subset category of people who well,
there's two on there. There's there's the people who are
born into it and like totally deal with it, Like, yeah, okay,
(04:38):
this is like a like I could have definitely been
born into a much worse era in history or social position.
I'm going to just accept that the cost of having
all this great stuff is like a super boring job,
even more boring than like being a square john in
an office. Yeah, at least a square john in an office.
You get to go have your fun without people making
fun of you. Well yeah, so, but there was more
(04:59):
of a royals who are like, yo, I'm going to
take this. I'll take this deal. It's not a perfect deal,
but I sense there are other worst deals and the
possible so that I can sort of sort of get
my head of. The ones that definitely are unusual are
the sort of K. Middlesen type people who look at
that and think it through, so they do the thing
you've done that possibly making didn't do, and then go,
(05:23):
oh no, no, that is actually what I want. That's
the weird thing, and then doesn't seem to have any
regret or or remorse, like, was right, that was what
you want. She's very good at at what she has
to do, which is being conventionally attractive and thin and
wear clothing in public. Would you go to Mars if
someone offered your ticket? Absolutely not. Now wants I want
(05:47):
somebody and I don't care if his evil musk. I
just I don't care who it is. I want a
human being to go to Mars. But if you ask me,
would I be that? Yeah? But would you do that?
I would say no. I would say I would be
like the person to go to Mars. Yeah, Okay, after
they do it for a while, I wonder is it
the safety that you're worried about with Mars? Yeah? And
(06:09):
it just seems, um, I don't know what I would
be getting out of it. Yeah, the safety and and
for what reward. I'm not a rock scientist. I don't
know if I would be the best person to put there.
I could see you as a rock scientist, that you've
got science in your locker, haven't you? That's true? Could
would you wouldn't go to Mars? Why wouldn't you go
to Mars? The safety so that I saw the Martian
with mc damon and growing potatoes that tie us into Yeah,
(06:32):
it looked It's just just just the length of the journey.
You know, I'm a little I don't think it would
be for me the length of the journey, you know, Dan,
But people, I think a lot of people would say
that being a historian would be boring. You've had to
spend a lot of time reading very old books. You
don't find you don't find that barring. No, I don't.
(06:52):
Actually I quite like it. Yeah, but I don't know
a lot of m Are there a lot of people
who looked at his story and when I think that's
going to be boring? Because I think the case that
we've been talking about is people who think something is
going to be better than it is. I was pretty
sure about what being his stor you didn't think it
was going to be like Indiana Jones. Now that's an archeologist,
(07:14):
but he's sort of in the same it's the same academic.
He's a professor. Oh, he's a he's a professor. That
but that I wouldn't have done. I'm not a professor.
I could never ever have been a professor. And that's
actually important. So when I graduated from my degree in
two two, I was going he went to Cambridge. He's
not going to mention, but he went to Cambridge. You know,
(07:35):
I don't. I like other people to bring it up
for me. And it's the real one as well, not
there like proxy one in Massachusetts. When I graduated and
I was thinking, only should I do like loads to
more degrees and stay at Cambridge? Sort of everyone that
had taught me and knew me was like, I don't
think you'll like that. I don't think you're like any
aspect of that's whatsoever. And so the life that I've
chosen is distinctly not that of an institutionalized profess. So
(08:00):
it's the life where I just sort of do my
own thing and read what I want to read, and
write what I want to write, and sit in my
little office in my pajamas. Now, this is an audio medium,
but I do want people listening to this to know
that Dan is in a very nice set of pajamas,
sole set of pajamas, like he's in like notting Hill
(08:20):
or something. I've never seen anyone in like a full
set of pajamas. And it's not that late that we're recording,
but he got ready for bed. Yeah, but I knew
that after we finished it would be about my bed time.
And then I just thought I'd just be ready. I
could just die straight into bed and just worm my
way and I have a little you know sleep. Well,
if we're talking about diving straight in, you're here because
(08:43):
you have a novel that's coming out in the United
States in paperback? Is it coming out in paperback or
hard hard back? Over here? Hardcover hardcover of course, yes,
the real deal. I think we'd go hard yeah, hardcover, Yeah,
hardcover of people that's right here, Yeah, yeah, that's us.
Oh my gosh. And he's drinking wine. He just pulled
(09:06):
a goblet of wine out from behind the behind the camera.
It's almost it is. It's quite a large one glass,
but with not much wine in it. So yeah, it
does have a sort of goblet vibe to it's Monday night.
I would not drink heavily on a Monday night. Of course.
Well we are here to talk, of course, about his
wonderful novel Essex Dogs, which I had the privilege of reading.
It's just a it's a wonderful novel. If you like
(09:26):
this podcast because you like interesting stories from history well told.
Obviously A Sex Dogs is a fictionalization, but it is
based on a very true story. And that's what I
would like to talk to you about. Oh, that would
be fun. Let's do it. So tell me the story.
And my achilles heel is French pronunciation because my Eastern
(09:47):
European tongue doesn't curl the right way. But the say
the name of the campaign to save me from myself here,
so as it's still is set in the Cressy campaign.
Oh Cressy, that's I could have done that. You can say,
reci Yeah, there's a little there's an accent that throughout
the house made me near Chrissy. But but Cressy is fine. Um.
(10:08):
So that's one of the first major campaigns of the
Hundred Years War, which took place in the summer of
the year thirty and forty six, which is right at
the start of the Hundred Years War. With Hundred Years
War from thirty thirty seven through fifty three were loaded
at the beginning with the Third Reign. I'm gonna I'm
gonna interrupt before before we dive in for people who
are just listening and and have heard probably the term
(10:29):
Hundred Years War, but don't know exactly what it is.
Can you set up a bit about what this conflict
was and why they were fighting it for so long? Yeah? Absolutely,
and that is very very cool. The Hundred Years War
is a dispute in the Late Middle Ages in the
fourteenth and fifteenth century between the two royal rival houses
(10:50):
of the Kingdoms of England on the one hand and
France on the other. And at the very core of
the dispute is who should be the King of France.
Starts with the with the third who claims that he
should be the rifle King of France because he has
a claim through his mother and his cousin Philippa, who
is the King of France. Philip six, at the outset
(11:12):
Hundreds War says, well, I beg to differ. I am
actually the King of France and I have a claim
through my father and my father the king of Brands.
It's rather wasn't the King of France. But so there's
a but he's he's got I think inarguably a better
claim than Edward. However, there are other reasons for them
(11:32):
disputing who's going to be the King of France, rather
than they both want to be the King of France.
One of them is that you have an anomalous, weird
position by the time he gets to the fourteenth century,
which goes all the way back to the normal conquest
of ten sixty six, whereby kings of England have lands
in France, and sometimes that's Normandy and it's great s
(11:52):
extent on the Henry. Second it's Normandy, Aquitaine and Gumain
Brittany each other an like this, the huge sway either
almost a third of the current territorial land mass of
France is at some point held by English kings technically
as nobles of France. And that's a weird situation and
changes and evolves throughout the plantation years. But by the
(12:13):
time you get to end of the third there's still
have a small amount of land Gascony, and the French
kings aren't very happy about that, sterrritating to have another
king as one of your lord's vassals Vassels. Yeah, so
part of the reason for for this dispute over the
crown of France is a kind of nuclear escalation of
(12:35):
this argument. End of the third sees that one of
the best ways to counter phillips claim to kick him
out of Gascony is to say, you can't kick me
out of Gascony because actually I'm the King of France.
And you know what, let's have a really long war
about whether or not this is the case, and it
goes generated a hundred years is underplaying. It just goes
on for six notes, not quite a hundred and sixty
(13:00):
hundred and seventeen something. Once one of my favorite tidbits,
I think from one of your books, the book on
the Ward the Roses, is when fast forwarding obviously you know,
a hundred years from this event, when I hope I'm
doing this right, because it is from your book. Henry
the sixth is trying to establish his claim in France
and they're distributing propaganda posters, trying to trace his lineage
(13:21):
back to St. Louis to be like, no, no, he's
he's right. Look at the poster that we made. They
get right into it and it opens up this enormous
kind of worms which which you then start seeing the
domestic politics of England and France as well of people say, oh,
no way, I should be the king because x y Z.
I mean, that's that's what underpins the wars of the
Roses in England the fifteenth century. Your Plancaster quote unquote
(13:43):
conflict for the crown is really some of the principles
established in the Hundred As War, which are like I've
not a better claim to the ground than you, and
I'm going to fight you with my now enormous armies
and improving siege weaponry and so on and so forth. Anyway,
said back to the Hundred Years War as well as
a dynastic dispute for the quote unquote dynastic dispute for
the crown of France, it's such a draw in more
(14:06):
and more and more competence around Europe. So you have
the Scots fighting the English, you have Castile drawn into
this eventually, have sort of kingdoms of Portugal drawn into it.
You have Flanders is an enormously important sort of theater
of hot and Cold War. You have the sort of
German states in the pressing campaign. You have the Battle
of Crescy, as we hopefully get to, you have five
(14:26):
different kings on the battle. So this, this apparent sort
of neighborly dispute between England and France, in fact spills
out into basically the whole of Western Europe fighting each
other in various combinations for generations. So now explain what
the Cressy campaign is. We have King Edward the Third
in England trying to retain his claim in France, and
(14:47):
what happens. So at this point, which is thirty six,
the war is young. War is less than nine less
and ten years old, and there have been already different
spheres of operation open up. There's fighting going on down
a gascony. There's been a great sea Battle of Choice there,
which is sort of a modern Netherlands. But this is
(15:09):
the first big invasion by one side of the other.
So in July six d of the Third Lands approximately
fifteen thousand troops on one of the Normandy beaches. And
whant to say Normandy beaches You probably think D Day
World War two, and you're right to, because it is
a beach on the cutting Tampa Peninsula of Normandy slightly
(15:32):
up from what in the Second Worldar was called Utah
Beach should a place called some Valo where Edwards put
fifteen thousand men onto a beach, and you can sort
of imagine this as a medieval saving Private Ryan. In fact,
the idea of a medieval saving Private Ryan, you know,
medieval d Day was the first picture I had in
my head the sparks what became the novel of Esex Dogs,
(15:54):
because I felt like I'd never seen a kind of
band of brothers saving Private Ryan, an American hard boiled
version of a medieval amphibious invasion. But that's how the
Cressy campaign starts. Edward the third says, you know what
I'm after, France, and I'm gonna well, that is he
actually going to try and take Philip's throne in Paris.
Possibly He's certainly going to cause as much trouble for
(16:15):
Philip the sixth of France as possible in northern France
in order to discomfort him so much that possibly his
nobles are rebelled against him and the people will start
to abandon their their fealty to him. So that's what Edwards,
Edward sets about twelfth of July, he lands his huge army,
probably over the course of the next few days. They
DeCamp onto the beach. They are opposed by local militias,
(16:36):
but the local militias who are opposing them soon see
that this is an enormous, enormous army, I mean a
gigantic invasion army. This is the biggest army that has
ever been taken from England to France, and they're going
to do some some serious damage. So they would say
the small militia who were on the coast, because Edwards
kept his invasion plans or the location of his invasion
(16:58):
at least secret spies of in in London for months
and months, they knew an invasion was coming, but they
had no idea where that parallels with d Day in
are striking um, there's there's not much opposition and they
start falling back and so Edward really has them the
run of the Gotta Tupe Peninsula, this bit of Normandy
that sticks out going up to subar So between Normandy
(17:19):
and Calais. So it's hard without drawing you a map,
but there's a sort of pointy bit that's not Brittany
Franz that's the bit of Normandy we're talking about. So
and they come in right at the tip of it.
And the French strategy for the first couple of weeks
is essentially a Fabian one. Is to fall back, try
(17:40):
and delay the English advances as much as possible by
breaking bridges, by burning things, by but not by engaging.
And so the English do what will become a standard
tactic of the Hundred Years War, and they sort of
launched it in Earnest in thirteen forty six, and it's
called the Cheval shape. So they set their army out
(18:00):
essentially into the field to just burn and plunder and
cause as much terror and mayhem as possible. It is
to carve a path through the landscape, a path of terror.
Now I wrote Essex Dogs. When I finished writing, I
finished writing it's through March, shortly before the Russian invasion
of Ukraine. But if you can cast your mind back
(18:21):
to Russian tactics at the beginning of the war in Ukraine,
which was to burn and plunder and rape and kill
and cause as much mayhem and terror as possible. That's
borrowed directly from a long military playbook. And of the
third did not invent the chevrochet. The Mongols have done
it before. I'm sure you know in the Bronze Agent
has happened. You know, we can go back probably as
far as human history and mounted warriors anyway, go to
(18:43):
see examples of similar tactics. It wo, but this is
like Edward really master the English master the chevrochet in war.
And so the first sort of or probably half of
the Gressive campaign is effectively one big, long, just campaign
of absolute terror, as the English pushed through the Norman
countryside through the sort of kas and all the stuff.
(19:05):
You again, if you know you're saving private Ryan or
band of brothers, you know these little lanes and head
English just burn a sway through it, heading for the
major towns of Normandy, which will lead them to the
same valley, and then they can go up river towards Paris.
And so in your fictional version, we're joined by ten
(19:26):
men in Essex, Doug. The story is ten men who
are sort of more loyal to each other than any crown. Right.
So this story of the Christic campaign has been told
in history and in fiction many times, but it struck
me when I was thinking about it, or thinking more
generally about the realities of warfare in this period, which
(19:47):
is something I've written a reasonable amount about in my
history books. Struck me that we very seldom see medieval
warfare through the eyes of what in the World War
two film you'd call the ordinary grunts, right, just the
rank and file. The Chrissy Campaign is really famous in
medieval history for things that aristocrats and nobles do. There's
(20:08):
there are lots of little famous sort of vignettes to
set pieces. When end of the Third land on the
beach of sam Lug, for example, he he trips over
in the surf, bangs his nose into the sand and
gets a nose bleed, and he has the quick wit
to say, ah, this just shows the land wants me
because I was worried this might be you know moment.
When we get to later in the campaign, at the
Battle of Chrissy, the Black Prince supposedly performs great heroics.
(20:31):
He's in danger. His father refuses to come to his aid,
so the story goes, this hasn't led him win his spurs,
and this is you know, at sixteen years old, this
is the Black Prince kind of magnificent emergence as a
chivalric warrior, anyway, Chris, he throws up lots of these
vignettes through the writings of chronicles like Jean Froissart and
various others of that type, but we don't often hear
(20:53):
anything at all in this campaign about what it was
like for ordinary people. Now, if we consider that in
a medieval army of about fifteen thousand, somewhere between ten
and would be what would call nobles and knights, that
still that leads the vast majority of the army as
not nobles and knights. And what I wanted to do
was somehow or other capture the experience of one small
(21:14):
group of warriors on this campaign who were ordinary people.
And so I created this little platoon really called the
Essets Dogs, who are quite typical of what we know
of the rank and file of medieval armies in this period,
in that they're not professional soldiers, because there are no
professional armies in this point. They are sort of just
(21:36):
you call immerce and mercenary freebooters. Chances, you know, in
in war time they will seek out military contracts and
go fight for whoever is paying, and in peace time
they'll use exactly the same skills for whatever jobs require
them and that tends to be sort of thieving piracy.
(21:56):
If you need someone beating up poojical, you know they did.
So there are a group of violent of men pH
violence is their profession, but not all of them are
violent men. And so within this group you have some
people who are unthinkingly committed to the profession of fighting
and causing mayhem, and there are some who are new
(22:21):
to it and don't really know what they've gotten themselves into.
And there are some most or best epitomized by their
leader Loveday, who was into a birth, starting to have
second thoughts. And so you what we see unfold across
their adventures within the Crazy Campaign is the dissolving of
(22:41):
the bond between that group q as they all Osten's.
We try and keep the group to get you know,
they're they're committed. They're all verbally and in some sense
mentally committed to one another to keeping this this band together.
But actually it's it's all going to ship inside the
end of the Beatles. You know, everyone wants this thing
to continue, but it's it's you know, it has to
be has to finish. Although by the end of Crescy
(23:03):
and the Siege of Calais. It's a victory for the English,
isn't it? At this point. That's the thing about the
Creasy campaign. You have this Chevrochet, you have several big
sort of dramatic scenes in Norman towns. At Saalo con Rouen,
you have drama dramatic crossings of two rivers, the River
(23:25):
Seine and the north of that, the River So and
then you have this enormous battle at Cressy at the
end of August six, which is a seemingly miraculous victory
for the English. Subsequent to that they go off to Calais,
beseach Calais. That's the topic of the book I'm writing
at the moment, which is a sequel Dresserslves the Wolves
of Winter. Sorry to spoil the ending. Wikipedia would do
(23:47):
the job just as well. So of spoiling, I mean,
not a not a wristing a novel. No, but AI
might be might be close behind, and I think GBT
four might have and I like to say five for
the actually four that's going to catch me, I think,
so yeah. And then well then you have the Siege
of Calais which follows, which is a very different cattle fish.
If the Cresty campaign lasts roughly seven weeks. The Calais
(24:12):
campaign is an eleven month siege which ends with them
starving the people out of Calais. But yeah, the the
end fronduct of the of the Crest Cambais is they
take Calais and that's in English hands. Until Mary Tudors right,
it is wild to consider starving a city out as
a victory. Yeah, but that's that's the tactic in medieval siegecraft,
(24:35):
by and large, just hang around until someone gets bored
and gives up, or gets hungry and gives up, and
the victory is that Calais falls into English hands. And
this is not just why we took a city military terms,
there's an enormous economic component to this warfare. Now in
Essex Dogs, when I try and show really really up
(24:57):
with the camera locked to this very small group of men,
is what does the war look like from this in
this claustrophobic environment of the single military platoon. What I'm
trying to do with the siege of Calais in Wolves
of Winter is to show actually one of the other
interests in this war, because we've all heard the cliche
talking about British and American an Allied activity in the
(25:19):
Middle East over the course of our lifetimes. Ah, it's
all about the oil. It's just all about money. Well,
that's that's kind of people say that because there's a
lot big part of that. That's true. It's also true
in the Middle Ages that it's about the economy. And
Calais is an enormously important strategic town halfway between between
(25:40):
France and Flanders. It controls are very narrow, the narrowest
bit of the English Channel. It's in easy reach of
the most economically prosperous sports towns in southern England, and
it's the sinc Ports. It's been a haven for pirates
for years and years and years who can pray on
passing shipping. It's both a menace and an incredibly it
(26:01):
will be a bridge head for any further English military operation.
But fundamentally, once the siege of Catwan's Calais falls in
thirty seven, Edward the Third clears out everyone who lives
in Calais invites in the richest merchants from England to
take over this town and run it as an economic
contropoe on the continent. Again not new thinking, this was
(26:22):
exactly what had happened in the Holy Land during the Crusades.
The same thing had happened the Crusades. Yes, they had
a big religious purpose to go to Jerusalem. But then
there was the thing that kept every and interested was
the economic viability of the port. Tack. Well, this is
the sort of the same in the hundred Years ward.
That's there's a massive financial imperative to doing this, And
the only reason that these wars are possible is because
(26:44):
people are prepared to lend ed with the third astonishing
amounts of money. Astonishing amount of He bankrupts bank, he
bankrupts the body bank, He almost bankrupts the Fresco Baldi.
He he's running up these gigantic debts to syndicates of
merchants from the richest towns in England to continue paying
for this war. And they're all very happy to continue
(27:04):
financing the war because war is fantastic for business. The
more money they lend him, he mortgages. It actually creates
a mortgage to pay for these wars. He says, give
me the money now, and you can take over to
the tax revenues of all these different rich ports around England.
So the whole merchants take over the ports, all the
Yarmouth merchants take over the tax of the ports of Yarmouth,
(27:25):
the London merchants in London, and some of the Dover
and so so once you really start getting under the
skin of this war, which looks like if you read
Quassa Nights and nobles doing heroic deeds, that's just all like,
that's the that's the icing. This is really just about
merchants and pirates struggling financial dominance and poor grunts dying
(27:47):
because of it. If we're talking, you know, chivalric deeds.
I feel like the legend of Edward the Black Prince,
who is the son of King Edward the third. Obviously
Edward dies and never takes the throne, you know, leads
to challenges in the world the roses. But he's in
my understanding in British culture, very much seen as a
(28:07):
gallant hero. How did you portray him in your book,
she answered, in a non leading question. How nice, she
to asked, Yeah, it was it was the Black Print's
eldest son of Edward third, does have this this grand
reputation as the sort of paragonal of chivalry. It's it's him,
It's Henry the fifth after him, and it's leverage of
the line art before him. I don't think he would
(28:29):
have wanted to run into any of those three. Ah.
Actually I was concerned a dark alley, but anywhere ever, well,
I would I I'm very charming in a lady. They
would be very nice to me. They wouldn't. That's learns
the horrible thing that they really, absolutely massively would. None
of those three men would be nice to you at all.
They would be ghastly to you, and there would be
(28:52):
ghastly to me as well, because I would be a
sort of Welsh peasant person. So um. But it is
the Blackfrint. He has this great reputation. I think. Is
it's great that he never became king, because the reputation
will have evaporated. He was, by no means as subtle
as his father. He was in later life an extraordinarily
(29:14):
effective war lords medieval military tactician, if not a strategist.
He was being brute, absolutely like Henry the Fit, absolutely
brutal in an age which demanded that labine large of
its military leaders in the Kressy campaign. He's often romanticized
(29:34):
as having been this kind of sixteen year old is
first time on campaign, and so the story goes based
on very very thin evidence. He quits himself immensely. Well, well,
what do we mean he quits himself. Well, he sort
of doesn't really do anything for the whole of the
campaign because he's been babysat by the Marshal of the Army,
Thomas Beecham, Earl of Warwick, and the Constable of the Army,
(29:58):
William to Boone, Earl Northampton. When he does sort of
have an opportunity to do anything, the first thing he
does of real note during the campaign is sack a monastery.
Then he allows then a bit later, once his father
has issued instructions they're on the run from Phillip's army.
At this point between the sen and Song, on no
account are we stopping to sack monasteries. He lets his
(30:20):
then sack another monastery, for which twenty of his men
are hanged summarily by his father. And then when we
get to the Battle of Crescy well Edward, the Black
Prince comports himself in quite a strange way. He's placed
he sort of front and center of the action, but
he doesn't really obey orders or seem to understand the
(30:43):
tactics of the battle very well, and he allows himself
to be pulled out of the English lines and effectively
captured and his standard face and this is a big
disaster in the in the heat of the battle for
the English. Now, the legend goes that he had been
seen around it and his father was who was commanding
the battle from the rear, up on a windmill so
(31:04):
he could see across the whole battlefield. His father was
informed that he was in trouble and said, oh, you know,
let it, let him win. His spurs had improved himself
a man. But none of that in point of historical fact.
And it's been some amazing research on crazy. Historical research
on crazy recently by Michael Livingstone, which has revised the
location of the battlefield and everything basically happened on the
(31:25):
battlefield says that that's really not what happened at all.
He was captured and he was enormously lucky to be
rescued m hm um and his father was extremely annoyed
with him after the battle. Anyway, So in my not
knowing all this, as I'm trying to write the Black
Prince into the story of Essex Dogs, I also asked myself. Well, firstly,
(31:47):
you say, well, people can change out their career. And
I asked myself, what would a sixteen year old placed
in charge of an army when his dad's also the king,
actually be like? And my answer was not so. Well,
there's a degree of petulance, which, to go back to
the beginning of our conversation, one does see sometimes in
princes of the royal blood there's an enormal carmanorum. Yeah,
(32:11):
thank you, enormous amon of arrogance. There's a total irresponsibility.
And since I was trying to write a fun novel
and there's almost nothing that's known in reality about the
Black Prince's character from this time, it's not written afterwards
by people just seeking to lionize him, I thought, well,
let's make him a drunk, Let's make him a sufficious
(32:31):
little swine, but also a guy who has beat And
then here's Harry again, has had to deal with the
fact of a father as a king. His father has
been king since he was fifty. His father is not
deemed to all his school plays. Let's say he's he's
a horrible little shit because he's lonely, but that doesn't
(32:54):
excuse his atrocious behavior. Throughout Essex songs, and that we
have a mirror character among the Essex songs is called Romford,
who's also sixteen, but who's a sort of street kid
from London who has been found his way into this
group of theirs. Told of the last minute, literally as
they're getting on the boat to leave France. He's trying
to run away from England and succeeds. He and the
Prince cross paths with for Romford emotionally disastrous consequences and
(33:18):
for the Prince absolutely no consequences whatsoever. He learns nothing,
he sees nothing, he's he's completely untouched by the gentle
suffering of his his little acolyte. And so there's a
kind of it's not quite a romance between them at all,
but there is a collision of these two sixteen year
olds in war that I found quite interesting to write.
(33:39):
I was going to ask, I don't want to do
another too much about leaving question, but there is a
little interesting thing you play with around sexuality, and can
you talk a little bit about the fluidity maybe of
sexuality in the th hundreds that maybe modern audiences don't
understand necessarily or want to think about. Yeah, there's look
(34:00):
at this quite a lot of really respectable authors and
I can't possibly include myself in that bracket, but you know,
there's there's there's proper writers writing about the Middle Ages
at the moment. The temptation, of course, for modern novelists
approaching the Middle Ages is to just dump twenty one
century priorities onto this canvas because it's like it's a
(34:25):
cool mash up and I get it, it's heynani no,
but guess what, we're all sort of gender fluid or
whatever it might be. Because some of these novels are
great in their way, but I found it like, not
that satisfying a thing for me to do, to go
to go and do that. And what I tried to
draw out in Essex Dogs, particularly in this story I've
(34:46):
alluded to between Romford and the Black Prince, is something
about what sexuality was like in the Middle Ages, which
is not so categorized, let's say, as it is now. Yeah,
we have in the tw first century a weirdly nineteen
century pseudo scientifical scientific sort of approach that we've we've
put into gender and sexuality that were we to see
(35:09):
it in terms of ethnicity and like the shapes of
heads and ship. You go, oh my god, that's the
wackiest end of the wackiest, wackiest end of nineteenth century pseudoscience.
But we've we've sort of got a version of that
around section in the Middle Age. You don't have any
of that. You've got lots of really wacky, weird nonsense science,
but it doesn't seem to have been applied to categorizing sexuality.
(35:33):
So the love between men, which we would probably categorize
as homosexual, isn't really thought of in that way. As
the Middle Ages. There are distinct categories of sexual in misconduct. Well,
there's really one which is buggery. That's how to make
anything that as we were telling me, yeah, son of yeah,
(35:54):
there's that, and then there's everything else, or rather there's
there's what's a legit in the church law in terms
of sexual conduct, which is very strictly by this stage
defined as sex between one man and one woman for
the purposes of procreation. And then there's everything else, which
is pretty my guinet, which could be gathered about. Now
that's a very strict church definition and it's not very
(36:17):
well policed, and I don't think it's very well observed
or eBay if that is definitely not very well observed
or obeyed by ordinary people. But as regards you know,
the sort of versions of same sex attraction, which in
the twenty fi century we would be extremely keen to
categorize and delineate and make sort of names for and
(36:37):
acronyms and hashtags and stuff like. That's that's us. They
just don't do that. I'm not like passing judgment, really,
I'm just saying that that's not how it works in
the Middle Ages. When you try and make the Middle
Ages do that, it doesn't ring very true. So what
I try to do, as it stokes, it's just play
with this idea that there is an attraction certainly from
Romford side. Yes, that came across as as a reader. Yeah,
(37:00):
older men are attracted to Romford. Robert doesn't really know
what he's about because he's just like a fiend and
a drifter. He quite likes the Prince, but he doesn't
it doesn't sort of torture himself by asking what that
makes him. He just has this kind of attraction towards
the Prince, which is in some sense sexual, but it's
(37:21):
also in that is sexual attraction is indistinguishable from a
role that Romford is given as a squire, as a
sort of social inferior to the prince. So he's sort
of he looks at him with this kind of daunted
admiration which spills over into sexual attraction. But that's so
much of that is part of his feeling, like the
(37:43):
social difference between them, and you can't unpick in the
Middle Ages that the difference for me between social longing
and sexual longing. They're bound up in the same thing.
And so the love story such as is between them
is quite subtle. I think it's certainly in its resolution, yeah, yeah,
(38:03):
and doesn't push it into the psychological component of romance
that we are familiar. And that that really something I've
tried to do throughout Essex Dogs Is is showing you
the Middle Ages with as little twenty one century psychological
intrusion as is possible without making it just totally confusing
and weird. So they do in order to make it comprehensible,
(38:25):
they speak in a sort of form of modern idium,
but they don't do things. Even the sympathetic characters don't
aren't really sympathetic in ways that are we would find
sympathetic in a novel set in contemporary time. I find
that challenge so relatable. I wrote a book and another
book coming out in February that takes place in the
early eight hundreds, and I tried to keep everything as
(38:50):
heldable for a modern audience as I could, while still
maintaining the feel of, you know, the regency period, pre
regid spirit in this sense. But my copy had a
her and I went back and forth a lot because
I wanted to have characters say okay, and she was like,
you can't, and I was like, I know it's not
historically accurate, but to me, it conveys sort of a
youthfulness and a teenage, you know, conversationality that a younger
(39:13):
character would do. That I kept them. So it's like
even the mistakes that I mistakes, I put an air
quotes I made. I think I tried to make us
deliberate choices for the text. As you know, I absolutely
loved Nat, Thank you very much. Cannot wait through immortality,
and I I think you're brilliant. And I just I
read that that first boview was in like one. I didn't.
(39:34):
I didn't put him up to this. You absolutely didn't.
You absolutely didn't felt it barely knew when I bought
it and I read it in one go and I
was transfixed by I remember as I was reading, I
was send your message, say this is just such like
I was transported to that to Edinburgh at that time,
and I thought that you just handled all of the
stuff that I've been agonized I was agonizing over as
(39:55):
I was writing Essex Stalks at the time. I was
reading that just like it just felt and I'm sure
effortless it's not the right word, because no, no, I
I agonized when those lists too. You have to make
those the sort of choices, but as a result that
you end up with feels just you know, once the
reader falls under your spell in anatomy, you know they're
(40:17):
just they're they're in that world and it just everything
feels right. And I think you've got to You've got
to earn that. And don't know, I think you know,
as you know, I thought you you earned it magnificently
in that book. But I think any writer has you
have to earn the right to do things that aren't
period accurate within a period book. Then that means getting
an awful lot of stuff right or close to right.
(40:38):
So that you're then you you then say okay, well
you earn the reader's trust and they're going to go
with you even when it is clear that you're doing
things that are not possible in that period. So in essence, dogs,
you know you've said, you have people saying okay, I
I really struggled with I'm writing a book about men
in an army. How am I going to have them
(41:00):
speak to one another? Because they's got to be somewhat profane.
But the profanity of the Middle Ages is blasphemy for
the fundamentally, our profanity is schatology and and it's and
it's sexual. That's how we swear. But so I had
a lot of trouble about am I going to use
(41:21):
the F word in this? And eventually yeah, I use
fairly liberally to punctuate military speech to because you have
to translate dialogue from communicate it to a modern audience
what you need to convey. It's part of the Tiffany
for oublem, right, the Tiffany problem. Yeah, it's a So
it's that's just sort of the colloquial name for it.
(41:42):
The fact that like if someone hears the name Tiffany,
they're they're like, oh, let's go to the mall. But
Tiffany is a name that existed in the Middle Ages
and the him you know, and for for years and
hundreds of years. But if you wrote a historical fiction
book and made your main character named Tiffany, it would
seem wrong even if it's right. And so the typically
(42:03):
problem is a is a colloquial version that someone told
to me when I was writing anatomy, where sometimes you
have to make things a little wrong so they feel right.
To monorn readers, do you know what I love that?
I've never heard it describes the Tiffany problem before, But
it's that's that says that says everything. I always think.
It's like castles, you know, I like Headed Castle a
(42:24):
famous watch watch Dan Jans Walk Your Castles on Netflix.
Please please squander your life in this pursuit. But they're
the wrong cut, you know, you see them now. They're
so bland. All medieval churches that's just devoid almost there
the usually devoid of wall paintings and color and no
with whitewash. If I went down the Windsor Castle Runch
is about five miles down the road from my house
(42:45):
with my tin of whitewash, and I just whitewash one
of the towers. I reckonized, I reckon trees and laws
would be dusted off. But they in the Middle Ages,
it would not be unusual to have a sort of
a bright new colored castle. But we just think so
even if you saw it on ILM, you'd say that's
absolutely non to These people don't know anything about the
Middle Age, So you're right. This is a version of
the Tiffany. I call it the white washing windsor castle
(43:07):
white washing winter castle problem, copyrighted Dan Jones. Another thing
I also think, I mean, I I loved ethex Dogs,
I like I thought it was just I felt like
I was learning. This was a period of history I
didn't know much about, and it made a battle feel
so immediate and personal when I tend to be so
bored by military history. It was so brilliantly done. Your
(43:28):
characters are so well sketched, and I think that your
use of violence and gore is so well placed. You
don't use it gratuitously, but you convey how brutal these
battles were. Well. Thank you. And there's I don't read
a lot of military fiction, and I don't write. I
mean I sort of some of them the books. In
(43:50):
books like The Crusade, you can't get away from it,
but the political as well as military, and it's not
you know, I'm not a battle nerd, really, but I
am a kind of people. And if one of the
techniques that I tried, or the main technique I tried
to use an Essex Dogs in order not to have
very sort of either cliche or just like gratuitously unpleasant
(44:12):
battle scenes, was just a lock focus, super super tight
with one character and you follow mainly two characters. You
follow the group of characters, but you're locked with a
couple of viewpoints love Day and Romford through most of
Essex Dogs, and not as much as you. But I
have worked in TV as well as in writing, and
one of the directors I worked with on a show
(44:32):
a few years ago gave me a very good piece
of advice, which is, if you're having trouble writing your
way through a scene, just lock that camera on one
person's shoulder. I found that the more I did that
in Essex Dogs, the more the battles sort of gained
very similitude. And there's one which is the one I
suppose it's really is a crescy where for part of
it where with Romford and he's just on the floor,
(44:54):
just on the floor, and we could see his feet
have been kicking it. But then it's really but he
can't get a real can't get up, and you don't
see anything out like flashes, you see other stuff that
also I found, like, firstly, it freed me from having
to write endless, endlessly long boring battle scene, so you've
just got this like confused chaotic vision through one person's eyes.
(45:16):
But I found also enabled me to make jokes because
anyone who knows is invested in the history of the
Crescent Campaign will come to us themselves and we'll be
able to see where there are there's little easter eggs
for the homeboys, right, like if you know that the
Black Prince, if you if you heard about the Black Princes, go, well,
it wasn't actually true that the Black Prince wore black armor.
That's a Victorian myth. Right, let's st get this. Then
(45:39):
there's a there's a joke for you about why how
he gets that name and the way he acts when
someone offers to give him some black armor is like
it's but if you don't know. It doesn't marry says
in character, but the picking viewpoints that are attached closely
to one character, you know, usually a lonely part of
the of the social hierarchy. I just found I had
much been a ways of having jokes and subverting history
(46:03):
and messing around with it, and and I enjoyed myself
doing that a great deal. But then look, i'd have
written a novel before. It was all new to me,
and now you're doing another. There's a sequel coming out.
I believe it's part of a trilogy. It's number two
of a trilogy. Yeah, and I've gotta I gotta really
finished writing that thing. Yeah, get on it so that
(46:24):
I can have you back on and we can talk
about it again. Siege craft is different. Siege craft is very,
very different. Narrative challenge. I'm finally writing a the story
of a siege to the story of a campaign, a
military campaign. Is it's pretty easy? Like, oh, of course, yeah,
famously easy. All of us are thinking that. But what
(46:45):
you do, what you have built into it is narrative imperative.
It goes forward because the army is moving and all
you've got to well not all you've got to do.
But that the thing you've got to actually a thing
you've got to do with the battle campaign that's difficult
is not make it inevitable the way they go in,
and you've got to throw red herring after red herring
in and give them different diversion so that it's not
just that, well, they're on a train and the trains
(47:06):
go into the station. Stop them here. Yeah, the difference
of the siege is, man, this train isn't going anywhere
the Strangers station. It's going to be at the station
and delivering gets off. So it's very, very rich in
textural opportunity. Unless it a very teenage girl and a
horse who thinks she talks to God. It shows up.
(47:28):
That's good for your siege. You know that you said
about the trol with Calli's trouble with Keli. The trouble
is it's not or Lane no true what you do
have just in the same way, Elier, you've got Joan
of Arc and the White Horse and every you know
instantly when you say that, everyone knows what you're thinking
if they listen to this podcast. Anyway, I haven't done
a Joan of Arc episode, but I will. Well, you
(47:50):
gotta get Helen Caster to come and do it. She
is brilliant. Yeah, she's she's she's the best. Put that aside. Cali,
you have a very very very very very fam us
end to the siege. So if you've been to Calais,
there's a row down sculpture in Calais of the six
Burghers of Calais, and they're coming out with the nooses
around the next to offer their lives to Edward to
(48:12):
buy the freedom of everyone who's left in the city,
who's survived baiting, rats and horse leather and whatever, whatever, whatever.
And it's a really famous, really famous scene. And then
you have cause Edward says, no, you hang you all,
and his wife Siliver, oh please through that? Okay that
I won't. It's a bit more dramatic than that, more
paces in it than that impression suggested. But there are
(48:36):
things in Cali to write towards that. They're there from
the history, and so I've that's helpful. I love this.
I don't know anything about this. There's so much history, Dan,
That's the lesson of history, isn't it. There's there's tons
of it. Every time I think you've you've got to
handle on it there's some more comes along. I've been
reading nonstub history for a few years, doing this podcast constantly,
(48:57):
and I've never heard about these burgers coming out with
nooses or on their necks. The Rodance. Just doing google
the Rodan sculpture, because the Rodand sculpture, there's two of them.
There's another one, I think in London. Maybe I've not
long to make somewhere else. I made a couple of
films that like the Real History of Essence Dogs and
made them in the summer last year, and we went
to Calais and I said and looked at that Rodand sculpture,
(49:18):
and it's just I mean, obviously it's it's not fourteenth century,
it's Rodin, it's modern, but it's a sensational piece of
sculpture which each of these six Burgers has a different
form of grief conveyed by their mannerisms in their face,
and they are what's amazing about it is that he
has given them individual character. And when we think about
(49:39):
so many of these set pieces from medieval history, if
it's not the king or someone like near the level
of the King, or Joan of Arc or whatever, they're
just sort of generic noble or generic knight or generic
peasant or generic archer or whatever. And what road Down
does so brilliantly in that sculpture is say, these were
real people, each one individual at each with a different
(50:02):
reaction to this what we now see as a sort
of a fixed historical tableau. And row Down is in
a measurably greater artist than I will ever be, obviously,
but the I don't know, he never owned as sex dogs. Well,
but the aim is to capture some of that, is
to say, like an army of fifteen thousand is fifteen individuals,
(50:23):
and each one of them with their own take on
the thing that they're experiencing. And when we think of
medieval archer, yeah, okay, that's like that's a type. That's
somebody who shoots a pretty similar bow with a similar
arrow out of a similar bow and a similar place.
But each one of those people was an individual, and
(50:44):
and in the realm of fiction at least, that gives
you such rich opportunity to do things with the past
that nonfiction doesn't always allowed to do. So that's for
me why I've enjoyed my little gap here. Fiction brilliantly said,
A six dogs comes out in America February fourteen. I
(51:05):
believe makes a great balance and take the week before. Yeah,
it's it's a pregame to immortality. Are I'm I'm twenty eight,
two weeks before. It's okay, but plenty of time to
read it and get ready for immortality. Your February could
be sensationally good fiction wise, couldn't right? Get a good
(51:28):
Valentine's Day gift for the medieval history lover in your life. Yeah,
and then get a get book after that. Yeah, thank
you so much for joining me. Uh, clearly when you're
ready to go to bed. This is this is what
I planned. Fire sell roll from straight into vice slumber.
(51:49):
And next time I'm in London, will you take me
on another tour? Can we go do something? Yeah? What
you want to say? I'm coming this summer, are you? Yeah,
I'm leading at tore to Cornwall, but I'm going to
be in London for a bit. Okay. So we went
to Westminster Abbey last time, didn't we? Yeah? I got
a personal tour from Dan Jones in Westminster Abbey. Not
to brag, but it was. It was wonderful. We had
(52:11):
to queue up. I've never done that before. It was.
I know. He was like, he's like, you're on TV.
You don't have to wait line. Well, what don't we
go to the Tower of London. Done, I'm there, let's
do it. Tower of London is good. Yeah, we'll do that. Great.
I'll see you this summer, and I'll see you even
sooner because we're talking about your book again for your launch.
Oh and then I'm coming to l a al, I'm
(52:32):
coming to see Iggy Pop. You're going to get so tired.
I'll see you so much. This is good. I know,
this is fantastic. Great, order Dan's book. Dan, I'll see
you so soon. Noble Blood is a production of Art
(53:00):
Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised.
I'm very excited to be joined for this very special
episode by my friend, amazing historian Dan Jones, who's joining
us via via seamless internet technology from across the pond
(00:21):
in England. Damn, thank you for joining me. It's absolutely
my pleasure. We like was so good at technology that
this was set up. We didn't was the easiest thing.
We knew how to do. Our headphones, our microphones. Both
of us just nailed it immediately first try. I definitely
had the microphone thing lockdown? Did you my end? Contrary
to what people are saying, my microphone was on the
(00:43):
entire time. It was fully, fully turned on. That wasn't
the mistake I was making. You were brought back on
this podcast by popular demand, that the people demanded you,
and so we had to bring you back. But you
were the Charles the second of podcast guests. Thank you
very much. That's probably my favorite Charles of all the three.
(01:03):
Of all the three. So I was I was asking
you before we started, how how is the new king
over there? Well? I think that you guys are thinking
about it a little bit more than we are. We
we did, we had quite a lot of it last year,
and now we're just The coronation will be along in
a few months time, and I think we'll have another
that'll go at it then. But by and large, no
one's playing it that much attention. I think. I think
(01:25):
of the two of us, I am the only one
who read Prince Harry's book. Is that true? That is true,
assuming you did read it. I didn't read it. I
have no reason to doubt you. And it's the sort
of thing you would do that like professionally or actually curious.
They sent me a copy, so this is full disclosure.
As I got a copy for free, I don't know
(01:45):
if I would have like shelled out for it. And
then I was just curious as a document. I was
just like, so, what is this guy really saying? Did
you find out? By the end of the book. Yes,
I think he's past off, isn't it. He's really mad
and I think he had a very sad family life.
I felt bad for him by the end of it.
I was like, it must have been really lonely. Your
(02:07):
dad never hugging you like that would have been awful,
But I do kind of think he's mad about the
wrong things a little bit, like he's holding these family
grudges and I feel sorry for him, but it also
feels like, I don't know if he realizes it's not
that's not like the main problem with the monarchy. Yeah,
it does seem to be quite um. He does seem
(02:28):
to have misconstrued and misconceived quite a lot of things
that you would have thought like by the time you
get to around the age of forty. He's a little
bit younger than me, but you know, by the age
of forty ish, you're supposed to have just started to
work out certain things about your life situation. And he
seems to have got some of them wrong, and the
ones that he hasn't got wrong, he's reacted to in
a really bad way. It does seem as though he's
(02:51):
the only one in this family who's gotten therapy, and
so clearly a therapist is like it would have been
nice if your dad hugged you, and then he's like yes,
and then really decided to write a book about it.
But was this a specialist therapist? Because I think it's
like a certain you need a special like one that
just does royals really like, basically you I could do it.
(03:12):
You seem you seem like you should be in the
person that would do therapy, because you'd probably think about
this more than than a normal therapist. It's true of
the category of case. Do you know the most deranged
thing that I've ever said out loud in my life
to my husband? I said, I said the words, and
I meant it is there's the really messed up part.
I said, if I had married into the royal family,
(03:34):
I would have been able to hack it. Like I
would have been able to do it. I can follow
rules really well. I would wear that right now, polished colors.
I wouldn't read the news. I would just like curtsy
the right way. I would follow all the rules. But
you've also done your research, like this is what I'm saying.
I don't. I would have known when I was getting
into I think, so do you? What do you wanted
(03:55):
to do it? I mean absolutely think yourskin seems great,
and like I'm not sure you harry a fit or whatever,
But like, would you in in the abstract have wanted
that job at any level? No, it's to me that
the job of being a royal. It seems like you
are quietly drinking all day with people I don't know
if I would like, I'm not a big drinker. And
also you have to go to a lot of like
(04:16):
ceremonial hospital openings. It feels like you're going to like
three graduation ceremonies a day, and your kid is never graduating. Right,
the job seems boring. I totally agree, And yet there
is a small, like distinct subset category of people who well,
there's two on there. There's there's the people who are
born into it and like totally deal with it, Like, yeah, okay,
(04:38):
this is like a like I could have definitely been
born into a much worse era in history or social position.
I'm going to just accept that the cost of having
all this great stuff is like a super boring job,
even more boring than like being a square john in
an office. Yeah, at least a square john in an office.
You get to go have your fun without people making
fun of you. Well yeah, so, but there was more
(04:59):
of a royals who are like, yo, I'm going to
take this. I'll take this deal. It's not a perfect deal,
but I sense there are other worst deals and the
possible so that I can sort of sort of get
my head of. The ones that definitely are unusual are
the sort of K. Middlesen type people who look at
that and think it through, so they do the thing
you've done that possibly making didn't do, and then go,
(05:23):
oh no, no, that is actually what I want. That's
the weird thing, and then doesn't seem to have any
regret or or remorse, like, was right, that was what
you want. She's very good at at what she has
to do, which is being conventionally attractive and thin and
wear clothing in public. Would you go to Mars if
someone offered your ticket? Absolutely not. Now wants I want
(05:47):
somebody and I don't care if his evil musk. I
just I don't care who it is. I want a
human being to go to Mars. But if you ask me,
would I be that? Yeah? But would you do that?
I would say no. I would say I would be
like the person to go to Mars. Yeah, Okay, after
they do it for a while, I wonder is it
the safety that you're worried about with Mars? Yeah? And
(06:09):
it just seems, um, I don't know what I would
be getting out of it. Yeah, the safety and and
for what reward. I'm not a rock scientist. I don't
know if I would be the best person to put there.
I could see you as a rock scientist, that you've
got science in your locker, haven't you? That's true? Could
would you wouldn't go to Mars? Why wouldn't you go
to Mars? The safety so that I saw the Martian
with mc damon and growing potatoes that tie us into Yeah,
(06:32):
it looked It's just just just the length of the journey.
You know, I'm a little I don't think it would
be for me the length of the journey, you know, Dan,
But people, I think a lot of people would say
that being a historian would be boring. You've had to
spend a lot of time reading very old books. You
don't find you don't find that barring. No, I don't.
(06:52):
Actually I quite like it. Yeah, but I don't know
a lot of m Are there a lot of people
who looked at his story and when I think that's
going to be boring? Because I think the case that
we've been talking about is people who think something is
going to be better than it is. I was pretty
sure about what being his stor you didn't think it
was going to be like Indiana Jones. Now that's an archeologist,
(07:14):
but he's sort of in the same it's the same academic.
He's a professor. Oh, he's a he's a professor. That
but that I wouldn't have done. I'm not a professor.
I could never ever have been a professor. And that's
actually important. So when I graduated from my degree in
two two, I was going he went to Cambridge. He's
not going to mention, but he went to Cambridge. You know,
(07:35):
I don't. I like other people to bring it up
for me. And it's the real one as well, not
there like proxy one in Massachusetts. When I graduated and
I was thinking, only should I do like loads to
more degrees and stay at Cambridge? Sort of everyone that
had taught me and knew me was like, I don't
think you'll like that. I don't think you're like any
aspect of that's whatsoever. And so the life that I've
chosen is distinctly not that of an institutionalized profess. So
(08:00):
it's the life where I just sort of do my
own thing and read what I want to read, and
write what I want to write, and sit in my
little office in my pajamas. Now, this is an audio medium,
but I do want people listening to this to know
that Dan is in a very nice set of pajamas,
sole set of pajamas, like he's in like notting Hill
(08:20):
or something. I've never seen anyone in like a full
set of pajamas. And it's not that late that we're recording,
but he got ready for bed. Yeah, but I knew
that after we finished it would be about my bed time.
And then I just thought I'd just be ready. I
could just die straight into bed and just worm my
way and I have a little you know sleep. Well,
if we're talking about diving straight in, you're here because
(08:43):
you have a novel that's coming out in the United
States in paperback? Is it coming out in paperback or
hard hard back? Over here? Hardcover hardcover of course, yes,
the real deal. I think we'd go hard yeah, hardcover, Yeah,
hardcover of people that's right here, Yeah, yeah, that's us.
Oh my gosh. And he's drinking wine. He just pulled
(09:06):
a goblet of wine out from behind the behind the camera.
It's almost it is. It's quite a large one glass,
but with not much wine in it. So yeah, it
does have a sort of goblet vibe to it's Monday night.
I would not drink heavily on a Monday night. Of course.
Well we are here to talk, of course, about his
wonderful novel Essex Dogs, which I had the privilege of reading.
It's just a it's a wonderful novel. If you like
(09:26):
this podcast because you like interesting stories from history well told.
Obviously A Sex Dogs is a fictionalization, but it is
based on a very true story. And that's what I
would like to talk to you about. Oh, that would
be fun. Let's do it. So tell me the story.
And my achilles heel is French pronunciation because my Eastern
(09:47):
European tongue doesn't curl the right way. But the say
the name of the campaign to save me from myself here,
so as it's still is set in the Cressy campaign.
Oh Cressy, that's I could have done that. You can say,
reci Yeah, there's a little there's an accent that throughout
the house made me near Chrissy. But but Cressy is fine. Um.
(10:08):
So that's one of the first major campaigns of the
Hundred Years War, which took place in the summer of
the year thirty and forty six, which is right at
the start of the Hundred Years War. With Hundred Years
War from thirty thirty seven through fifty three were loaded
at the beginning with the Third Reign. I'm gonna I'm
gonna interrupt before before we dive in for people who
are just listening and and have heard probably the term
(10:29):
Hundred Years War, but don't know exactly what it is.
Can you set up a bit about what this conflict
was and why they were fighting it for so long? Yeah? Absolutely,
and that is very very cool. The Hundred Years War
is a dispute in the Late Middle Ages in the
fourteenth and fifteenth century between the two royal rival houses
(10:50):
of the Kingdoms of England on the one hand and
France on the other. And at the very core of
the dispute is who should be the King of France.
Starts with the with the third who claims that he
should be the rifle King of France because he has
a claim through his mother and his cousin Philippa, who
is the King of France. Philip six, at the outset
(11:12):
Hundreds War says, well, I beg to differ. I am
actually the King of France and I have a claim
through my father and my father the king of Brands.
It's rather wasn't the King of France. But so there's
a but he's he's got I think inarguably a better
claim than Edward. However, there are other reasons for them
(11:32):
disputing who's going to be the King of France, rather
than they both want to be the King of France.
One of them is that you have an anomalous, weird
position by the time he gets to the fourteenth century,
which goes all the way back to the normal conquest
of ten sixty six, whereby kings of England have lands
in France, and sometimes that's Normandy and it's great s
(11:52):
extent on the Henry. Second it's Normandy, Aquitaine and Gumain
Brittany each other an like this, the huge sway either
almost a third of the current territorial land mass of
France is at some point held by English kings technically
as nobles of France. And that's a weird situation and
changes and evolves throughout the plantation years. But by the
(12:13):
time you get to end of the third there's still
have a small amount of land Gascony, and the French
kings aren't very happy about that, sterrritating to have another
king as one of your lord's vassals Vassels. Yeah, so
part of the reason for for this dispute over the
crown of France is a kind of nuclear escalation of
(12:35):
this argument. End of the third sees that one of
the best ways to counter phillips claim to kick him
out of Gascony is to say, you can't kick me
out of Gascony because actually I'm the King of France.
And you know what, let's have a really long war
about whether or not this is the case, and it
goes generated a hundred years is underplaying. It just goes
on for six notes, not quite a hundred and sixty
(13:00):
hundred and seventeen something. Once one of my favorite tidbits,
I think from one of your books, the book on
the Ward the Roses, is when fast forwarding obviously you know,
a hundred years from this event, when I hope I'm
doing this right, because it is from your book. Henry
the sixth is trying to establish his claim in France
and they're distributing propaganda posters, trying to trace his lineage
(13:21):
back to St. Louis to be like, no, no, he's
he's right. Look at the poster that we made. They
get right into it and it opens up this enormous
kind of worms which which you then start seeing the
domestic politics of England and France as well of people say, oh,
no way, I should be the king because x y Z.
I mean, that's that's what underpins the wars of the
Roses in England the fifteenth century. Your Plancaster quote unquote
(13:43):
conflict for the crown is really some of the principles
established in the Hundred As War, which are like I've
not a better claim to the ground than you, and
I'm going to fight you with my now enormous armies
and improving siege weaponry and so on and so forth. Anyway,
said back to the Hundred Years War as well as
a dynastic dispute for the quote unquote dynastic dispute for
the crown of France, it's such a draw in more
(14:06):
and more and more competence around Europe. So you have
the Scots fighting the English, you have Castile drawn into
this eventually, have sort of kingdoms of Portugal drawn into it.
You have Flanders is an enormously important sort of theater
of hot and Cold War. You have the sort of
German states in the pressing campaign. You have the Battle
of Crescy, as we hopefully get to, you have five
(14:26):
different kings on the battle. So this, this apparent sort
of neighborly dispute between England and France, in fact spills
out into basically the whole of Western Europe fighting each
other in various combinations for generations. So now explain what
the Cressy campaign is. We have King Edward the Third
in England trying to retain his claim in France, and
(14:47):
what happens. So at this point, which is thirty six,
the war is young. War is less than nine less
and ten years old, and there have been already different
spheres of operation open up. There's fighting going on down
a gascony. There's been a great sea Battle of Choice there,
which is sort of a modern Netherlands. But this is
(15:09):
the first big invasion by one side of the other.
So in July six d of the Third Lands approximately
fifteen thousand troops on one of the Normandy beaches. And
whant to say Normandy beaches You probably think D Day
World War two, and you're right to, because it is
a beach on the cutting Tampa Peninsula of Normandy slightly
(15:32):
up from what in the Second Worldar was called Utah
Beach should a place called some Valo where Edwards put
fifteen thousand men onto a beach, and you can sort
of imagine this as a medieval saving Private Ryan. In fact,
the idea of a medieval saving Private Ryan, you know,
medieval d Day was the first picture I had in
my head the sparks what became the novel of Esex Dogs,
(15:54):
because I felt like I'd never seen a kind of
band of brothers saving Private Ryan, an American hard boiled
version of a medieval amphibious invasion. But that's how the
Cressy campaign starts. Edward the third says, you know what
I'm after, France, and I'm gonna well, that is he
actually going to try and take Philip's throne in Paris.
Possibly He's certainly going to cause as much trouble for
(16:15):
Philip the sixth of France as possible in northern France
in order to discomfort him so much that possibly his
nobles are rebelled against him and the people will start
to abandon their their fealty to him. So that's what Edwards,
Edward sets about twelfth of July, he lands his huge army,
probably over the course of the next few days. They
DeCamp onto the beach. They are opposed by local militias,
(16:36):
but the local militias who are opposing them soon see
that this is an enormous, enormous army, I mean a
gigantic invasion army. This is the biggest army that has
ever been taken from England to France, and they're going
to do some some serious damage. So they would say
the small militia who were on the coast, because Edwards
kept his invasion plans or the location of his invasion
(16:58):
at least secret spies of in in London for months
and months, they knew an invasion was coming, but they
had no idea where that parallels with d Day in
are striking um, there's there's not much opposition and they
start falling back and so Edward really has them the
run of the Gotta Tupe Peninsula, this bit of Normandy
that sticks out going up to subar So between Normandy
(17:19):
and Calais. So it's hard without drawing you a map,
but there's a sort of pointy bit that's not Brittany
Franz that's the bit of Normandy we're talking about. So
and they come in right at the tip of it.
And the French strategy for the first couple of weeks
is essentially a Fabian one. Is to fall back, try
(17:40):
and delay the English advances as much as possible by
breaking bridges, by burning things, by but not by engaging.
And so the English do what will become a standard
tactic of the Hundred Years War, and they sort of
launched it in Earnest in thirteen forty six, and it's
called the Cheval shape. So they set their army out
(18:00):
essentially into the field to just burn and plunder and
cause as much terror and mayhem as possible. It is
to carve a path through the landscape, a path of terror.
Now I wrote Essex Dogs. When I finished writing, I
finished writing it's through March, shortly before the Russian invasion
of Ukraine. But if you can cast your mind back
(18:21):
to Russian tactics at the beginning of the war in Ukraine,
which was to burn and plunder and rape and kill
and cause as much mayhem and terror as possible. That's
borrowed directly from a long military playbook. And of the
third did not invent the chevrochet. The Mongols have done
it before. I'm sure you know in the Bronze Agent
has happened. You know, we can go back probably as
far as human history and mounted warriors anyway, go to
(18:43):
see examples of similar tactics. It wo, but this is
like Edward really master the English master the chevrochet in war.
And so the first sort of or probably half of
the Gressive campaign is effectively one big, long, just campaign
of absolute terror, as the English pushed through the Norman
countryside through the sort of kas and all the stuff.
(19:05):
You again, if you know you're saving private Ryan or
band of brothers, you know these little lanes and head
English just burn a sway through it, heading for the
major towns of Normandy, which will lead them to the
same valley, and then they can go up river towards Paris.
And so in your fictional version, we're joined by ten
(19:26):
men in Essex, Doug. The story is ten men who
are sort of more loyal to each other than any crown. Right.
So this story of the Christic campaign has been told
in history and in fiction many times, but it struck
me when I was thinking about it, or thinking more
generally about the realities of warfare in this period, which
(19:47):
is something I've written a reasonable amount about in my
history books. Struck me that we very seldom see medieval
warfare through the eyes of what in the World War
two film you'd call the ordinary grunts, right, just the
rank and file. The Chrissy Campaign is really famous in
medieval history for things that aristocrats and nobles do. There's
(20:08):
there are lots of little famous sort of vignettes to
set pieces. When end of the Third land on the
beach of sam Lug, for example, he he trips over
in the surf, bangs his nose into the sand and
gets a nose bleed, and he has the quick wit
to say, ah, this just shows the land wants me
because I was worried this might be you know moment.
When we get to later in the campaign, at the
Battle of Chrissy, the Black Prince supposedly performs great heroics.
(20:31):
He's in danger. His father refuses to come to his aid,
so the story goes, this hasn't led him win his spurs,
and this is you know, at sixteen years old, this
is the Black Prince kind of magnificent emergence as a
chivalric warrior, anyway, Chris, he throws up lots of these
vignettes through the writings of chronicles like Jean Froissart and
various others of that type, but we don't often hear
(20:53):
anything at all in this campaign about what it was
like for ordinary people. Now, if we consider that in
a medieval army of about fifteen thousand, somewhere between ten
and would be what would call nobles and knights, that
still that leads the vast majority of the army as
not nobles and knights. And what I wanted to do
was somehow or other capture the experience of one small
(21:14):
group of warriors on this campaign who were ordinary people.
And so I created this little platoon really called the
Essets Dogs, who are quite typical of what we know
of the rank and file of medieval armies in this period,
in that they're not professional soldiers, because there are no
professional armies in this point. They are sort of just
(21:36):
you call immerce and mercenary freebooters. Chances, you know, in
in war time they will seek out military contracts and
go fight for whoever is paying, and in peace time
they'll use exactly the same skills for whatever jobs require
them and that tends to be sort of thieving piracy.
(21:56):
If you need someone beating up poojical, you know they did.
So there are a group of violent of men pH
violence is their profession, but not all of them are
violent men. And so within this group you have some
people who are unthinkingly committed to the profession of fighting
and causing mayhem, and there are some who are new
(22:21):
to it and don't really know what they've gotten themselves into.
And there are some most or best epitomized by their
leader Loveday, who was into a birth, starting to have
second thoughts. And so you what we see unfold across
their adventures within the Crazy Campaign is the dissolving of
(22:41):
the bond between that group q as they all Osten's.
We try and keep the group to get you know,
they're they're committed. They're all verbally and in some sense
mentally committed to one another to keeping this this band together.
But actually it's it's all going to ship inside the
end of the Beatles. You know, everyone wants this thing
to continue, but it's it's you know, it has to
be has to finish. Although by the end of Crescy
(23:03):
and the Siege of Calais. It's a victory for the English,
isn't it? At this point. That's the thing about the
Creasy campaign. You have this Chevrochet, you have several big
sort of dramatic scenes in Norman towns. At Saalo con Rouen,
you have drama dramatic crossings of two rivers, the River
(23:25):
Seine and the north of that, the River So and
then you have this enormous battle at Cressy at the
end of August six, which is a seemingly miraculous victory
for the English. Subsequent to that they go off to Calais,
beseach Calais. That's the topic of the book I'm writing
at the moment, which is a sequel Dresserslves the Wolves
of Winter. Sorry to spoil the ending. Wikipedia would do
(23:47):
the job just as well. So of spoiling, I mean,
not a not a wristing a novel. No, but AI
might be might be close behind, and I think GBT
four might have and I like to say five for
the actually four that's going to catch me, I think,
so yeah. And then well then you have the Siege
of Calais which follows, which is a very different cattle fish.
If the Cresty campaign lasts roughly seven weeks. The Calais
(24:12):
campaign is an eleven month siege which ends with them
starving the people out of Calais. But yeah, the the
end fronduct of the of the Crest Cambais is they
take Calais and that's in English hands. Until Mary Tudors right,
it is wild to consider starving a city out as
a victory. Yeah, but that's that's the tactic in medieval siegecraft,
(24:35):
by and large, just hang around until someone gets bored
and gives up, or gets hungry and gives up, and
the victory is that Calais falls into English hands. And
this is not just why we took a city military terms,
there's an enormous economic component to this warfare. Now in
Essex Dogs, when I try and show really really up
(24:57):
with the camera locked to this very small group of men,
is what does the war look like from this in
this claustrophobic environment of the single military platoon. What I'm
trying to do with the siege of Calais in Wolves
of Winter is to show actually one of the other
interests in this war, because we've all heard the cliche
talking about British and American an Allied activity in the
(25:19):
Middle East over the course of our lifetimes. Ah, it's
all about the oil. It's just all about money. Well,
that's that's kind of people say that because there's a
lot big part of that. That's true. It's also true
in the Middle Ages that it's about the economy. And
Calais is an enormously important strategic town halfway between between
(25:40):
France and Flanders. It controls are very narrow, the narrowest
bit of the English Channel. It's in easy reach of
the most economically prosperous sports towns in southern England, and
it's the sinc Ports. It's been a haven for pirates
for years and years and years who can pray on
passing shipping. It's both a menace and an incredibly it
(26:01):
will be a bridge head for any further English military operation.
But fundamentally, once the siege of Catwan's Calais falls in
thirty seven, Edward the Third clears out everyone who lives
in Calais invites in the richest merchants from England to
take over this town and run it as an economic
contropoe on the continent. Again not new thinking, this was
(26:22):
exactly what had happened in the Holy Land during the Crusades.
The same thing had happened the Crusades. Yes, they had
a big religious purpose to go to Jerusalem. But then
there was the thing that kept every and interested was
the economic viability of the port. Tack. Well, this is
the sort of the same in the hundred Years ward.
That's there's a massive financial imperative to doing this, And
the only reason that these wars are possible is because
(26:44):
people are prepared to lend ed with the third astonishing
amounts of money. Astonishing amount of He bankrupts bank, he
bankrupts the body bank, He almost bankrupts the Fresco Baldi.
He he's running up these gigantic debts to syndicates of
merchants from the richest towns in England to continue paying
for this war. And they're all very happy to continue
(27:04):
financing the war because war is fantastic for business. The
more money they lend him, he mortgages. It actually creates
a mortgage to pay for these wars. He says, give
me the money now, and you can take over to
the tax revenues of all these different rich ports around England.
So the whole merchants take over the ports, all the
Yarmouth merchants take over the tax of the ports of Yarmouth,
(27:25):
the London merchants in London, and some of the Dover
and so so once you really start getting under the
skin of this war, which looks like if you read
Quassa Nights and nobles doing heroic deeds, that's just all like,
that's the that's the icing. This is really just about
merchants and pirates struggling financial dominance and poor grunts dying
(27:47):
because of it. If we're talking, you know, chivalric deeds.
I feel like the legend of Edward the Black Prince,
who is the son of King Edward the third. Obviously
Edward dies and never takes the throne, you know, leads
to challenges in the world the roses. But he's in
my understanding in British culture, very much seen as a
(28:07):
gallant hero. How did you portray him in your book,
she answered, in a non leading question. How nice, she
to asked, Yeah, it was it was the Black Print's
eldest son of Edward third, does have this this grand
reputation as the sort of paragonal of chivalry. It's it's him,
It's Henry the fifth after him, and it's leverage of
the line art before him. I don't think he would
(28:29):
have wanted to run into any of those three. Ah.
Actually I was concerned a dark alley, but anywhere ever, well,
I would I I'm very charming in a lady. They
would be very nice to me. They wouldn't. That's learns
the horrible thing that they really, absolutely massively would. None
of those three men would be nice to you at all.
They would be ghastly to you, and there would be
(28:52):
ghastly to me as well, because I would be a
sort of Welsh peasant person. So um. But it is
the Blackfrint. He has this great reputation. I think. Is
it's great that he never became king, because the reputation
will have evaporated. He was, by no means as subtle
as his father. He was in later life an extraordinarily
(29:14):
effective war lords medieval military tactician, if not a strategist.
He was being brute, absolutely like Henry the Fit, absolutely
brutal in an age which demanded that labine large of
its military leaders in the Kressy campaign. He's often romanticized
(29:34):
as having been this kind of sixteen year old is
first time on campaign, and so the story goes based
on very very thin evidence. He quits himself immensely. Well, well,
what do we mean he quits himself. Well, he sort
of doesn't really do anything for the whole of the
campaign because he's been babysat by the Marshal of the Army,
Thomas Beecham, Earl of Warwick, and the Constable of the Army,
(29:58):
William to Boone, Earl Northampton. When he does sort of
have an opportunity to do anything, the first thing he
does of real note during the campaign is sack a monastery.
Then he allows then a bit later, once his father
has issued instructions they're on the run from Phillip's army.
At this point between the sen and Song, on no
account are we stopping to sack monasteries. He lets his
(30:20):
then sack another monastery, for which twenty of his men
are hanged summarily by his father. And then when we
get to the Battle of Crescy well Edward, the Black
Prince comports himself in quite a strange way. He's placed
he sort of front and center of the action, but
he doesn't really obey orders or seem to understand the
(30:43):
tactics of the battle very well, and he allows himself
to be pulled out of the English lines and effectively
captured and his standard face and this is a big
disaster in the in the heat of the battle for
the English. Now, the legend goes that he had been
seen around it and his father was who was commanding
the battle from the rear, up on a windmill so
(31:04):
he could see across the whole battlefield. His father was
informed that he was in trouble and said, oh, you know,
let it, let him win. His spurs had improved himself
a man. But none of that in point of historical fact.
And it's been some amazing research on crazy. Historical research
on crazy recently by Michael Livingstone, which has revised the
location of the battlefield and everything basically happened on the
(31:25):
battlefield says that that's really not what happened at all.
He was captured and he was enormously lucky to be
rescued m hm um and his father was extremely annoyed
with him after the battle. Anyway, So in my not
knowing all this, as I'm trying to write the Black
Prince into the story of Essex Dogs, I also asked myself. Well, firstly,
(31:47):
you say, well, people can change out their career. And
I asked myself, what would a sixteen year old placed
in charge of an army when his dad's also the king,
actually be like? And my answer was not so. Well,
there's a degree of petulance, which, to go back to
the beginning of our conversation, one does see sometimes in
princes of the royal blood there's an enormal carmanorum. Yeah,
(32:11):
thank you, enormous amon of arrogance. There's a total irresponsibility.
And since I was trying to write a fun novel
and there's almost nothing that's known in reality about the
Black Prince's character from this time, it's not written afterwards
by people just seeking to lionize him, I thought, well,
let's make him a drunk, Let's make him a sufficious
(32:31):
little swine, but also a guy who has beat And
then here's Harry again, has had to deal with the
fact of a father as a king. His father has
been king since he was fifty. His father is not
deemed to all his school plays. Let's say he's he's
a horrible little shit because he's lonely, but that doesn't
(32:54):
excuse his atrocious behavior. Throughout Essex songs, and that we
have a mirror character among the Essex songs is called Romford,
who's also sixteen, but who's a sort of street kid
from London who has been found his way into this
group of theirs. Told of the last minute, literally as
they're getting on the boat to leave France. He's trying
to run away from England and succeeds. He and the
Prince cross paths with for Romford emotionally disastrous consequences and
(33:18):
for the Prince absolutely no consequences whatsoever. He learns nothing,
he sees nothing, he's he's completely untouched by the gentle
suffering of his his little acolyte. And so there's a
kind of it's not quite a romance between them at all,
but there is a collision of these two sixteen year
olds in war that I found quite interesting to write.
(33:39):
I was going to ask, I don't want to do
another too much about leaving question, but there is a
little interesting thing you play with around sexuality, and can
you talk a little bit about the fluidity maybe of
sexuality in the th hundreds that maybe modern audiences don't
understand necessarily or want to think about. Yeah, there's look
(34:00):
at this quite a lot of really respectable authors and
I can't possibly include myself in that bracket, but you know,
there's there's there's proper writers writing about the Middle Ages
at the moment. The temptation, of course, for modern novelists
approaching the Middle Ages is to just dump twenty one
century priorities onto this canvas because it's like it's a
(34:25):
cool mash up and I get it, it's heynani no,
but guess what, we're all sort of gender fluid or
whatever it might be. Because some of these novels are
great in their way, but I found it like, not
that satisfying a thing for me to do, to go
to go and do that. And what I tried to
draw out in Essex Dogs, particularly in this story I've
(34:46):
alluded to between Romford and the Black Prince, is something
about what sexuality was like in the Middle Ages, which
is not so categorized, let's say, as it is now. Yeah,
we have in the tw first century a weirdly nineteen
century pseudo scientifical scientific sort of approach that we've we've
put into gender and sexuality that were we to see
(35:09):
it in terms of ethnicity and like the shapes of
heads and ship. You go, oh my god, that's the
wackiest end of the wackiest, wackiest end of nineteenth century pseudoscience.
But we've we've sort of got a version of that
around section in the Middle Age. You don't have any
of that. You've got lots of really wacky, weird nonsense science,
but it doesn't seem to have been applied to categorizing sexuality.
(35:33):
So the love between men, which we would probably categorize
as homosexual, isn't really thought of in that way. As
the Middle Ages. There are distinct categories of sexual in misconduct. Well,
there's really one which is buggery. That's how to make
anything that as we were telling me, yeah, son of yeah,
(35:54):
there's that, and then there's everything else, or rather there's
there's what's a legit in the church law in terms
of sexual conduct, which is very strictly by this stage
defined as sex between one man and one woman for
the purposes of procreation. And then there's everything else, which
is pretty my guinet, which could be gathered about. Now
that's a very strict church definition and it's not very
(36:17):
well policed, and I don't think it's very well observed
or eBay if that is definitely not very well observed
or obeyed by ordinary people. But as regards you know,
the sort of versions of same sex attraction, which in
the twenty fi century we would be extremely keen to
categorize and delineate and make sort of names for and
(36:37):
acronyms and hashtags and stuff like. That's that's us. They
just don't do that. I'm not like passing judgment, really,
I'm just saying that that's not how it works in
the Middle Ages. When you try and make the Middle
Ages do that, it doesn't ring very true. So what
I try to do, as it stokes, it's just play
with this idea that there is an attraction certainly from
Romford side. Yes, that came across as as a reader. Yeah,
(37:00):
older men are attracted to Romford. Robert doesn't really know
what he's about because he's just like a fiend and
a drifter. He quite likes the Prince, but he doesn't
it doesn't sort of torture himself by asking what that
makes him. He just has this kind of attraction towards
the Prince, which is in some sense sexual, but it's
(37:21):
also in that is sexual attraction is indistinguishable from a
role that Romford is given as a squire, as a
sort of social inferior to the prince. So he's sort
of he looks at him with this kind of daunted
admiration which spills over into sexual attraction. But that's so
much of that is part of his feeling, like the
(37:43):
social difference between them, and you can't unpick in the
Middle Ages that the difference for me between social longing
and sexual longing. They're bound up in the same thing.
And so the love story such as is between them
is quite subtle. I think it's certainly in its resolution, yeah, yeah,
(38:03):
and doesn't push it into the psychological component of romance
that we are familiar. And that that really something I've
tried to do throughout Essex Dogs Is is showing you
the Middle Ages with as little twenty one century psychological
intrusion as is possible without making it just totally confusing
and weird. So they do in order to make it comprehensible,
(38:25):
they speak in a sort of form of modern idium,
but they don't do things. Even the sympathetic characters don't
aren't really sympathetic in ways that are we would find
sympathetic in a novel set in contemporary time. I find
that challenge so relatable. I wrote a book and another
book coming out in February that takes place in the
early eight hundreds, and I tried to keep everything as
(38:50):
heldable for a modern audience as I could, while still
maintaining the feel of, you know, the regency period, pre
regid spirit in this sense. But my copy had a
her and I went back and forth a lot because
I wanted to have characters say okay, and she was like,
you can't, and I was like, I know it's not
historically accurate, but to me, it conveys sort of a
youthfulness and a teenage, you know, conversationality that a younger
(39:13):
character would do. That I kept them. So it's like
even the mistakes that I mistakes, I put an air
quotes I made. I think I tried to make us
deliberate choices for the text. As you know, I absolutely
loved Nat, Thank you very much. Cannot wait through immortality,
and I I think you're brilliant. And I just I
read that that first boview was in like one. I didn't.
(39:34):
I didn't put him up to this. You absolutely didn't.
You absolutely didn't felt it barely knew when I bought
it and I read it in one go and I
was transfixed by I remember as I was reading, I
was send your message, say this is just such like
I was transported to that to Edinburgh at that time,
and I thought that you just handled all of the
stuff that I've been agonized I was agonizing over as
(39:55):
I was writing Essex Stalks at the time. I was
reading that just like it just felt and I'm sure
effortless it's not the right word, because no, no, I
I agonized when those lists too. You have to make
those the sort of choices, but as a result that
you end up with feels just you know, once the
reader falls under your spell in anatomy, you know they're
(40:17):
just they're they're in that world and it just everything
feels right. And I think you've got to You've got
to earn that. And don't know, I think you know,
as you know, I thought you you earned it magnificently
in that book. But I think any writer has you
have to earn the right to do things that aren't
period accurate within a period book. Then that means getting
an awful lot of stuff right or close to right.
(40:38):
So that you're then you you then say okay, well
you earn the reader's trust and they're going to go
with you even when it is clear that you're doing
things that are not possible in that period. So in essence, dogs,
you know you've said, you have people saying okay, I
I really struggled with I'm writing a book about men
in an army. How am I going to have them
(41:00):
speak to one another? Because they's got to be somewhat profane.
But the profanity of the Middle Ages is blasphemy for
the fundamentally, our profanity is schatology and and it's and
it's sexual. That's how we swear. But so I had
a lot of trouble about am I going to use
(41:21):
the F word in this? And eventually yeah, I use
fairly liberally to punctuate military speech to because you have
to translate dialogue from communicate it to a modern audience
what you need to convey. It's part of the Tiffany
for oublem, right, the Tiffany problem. Yeah, it's a So
it's that's just sort of the colloquial name for it.
(41:42):
The fact that like if someone hears the name Tiffany,
they're they're like, oh, let's go to the mall. But
Tiffany is a name that existed in the Middle Ages
and the him you know, and for for years and
hundreds of years. But if you wrote a historical fiction
book and made your main character named Tiffany, it would
seem wrong even if it's right. And so the typically
(42:03):
problem is a is a colloquial version that someone told
to me when I was writing anatomy, where sometimes you
have to make things a little wrong so they feel right.
To monorn readers, do you know what I love that?
I've never heard it describes the Tiffany problem before, But
it's that's that says that says everything. I always think.
It's like castles, you know, I like Headed Castle a
(42:24):
famous watch watch Dan Jans Walk Your Castles on Netflix.
Please please squander your life in this pursuit. But they're
the wrong cut, you know, you see them now. They're
so bland. All medieval churches that's just devoid almost there
the usually devoid of wall paintings and color and no
with whitewash. If I went down the Windsor Castle Runch
is about five miles down the road from my house
(42:45):
with my tin of whitewash, and I just whitewash one
of the towers. I reckonized, I reckon trees and laws
would be dusted off. But they in the Middle Ages,
it would not be unusual to have a sort of
a bright new colored castle. But we just think so
even if you saw it on ILM, you'd say that's
absolutely non to These people don't know anything about the
Middle Age, So you're right. This is a version of
the Tiffany. I call it the white washing windsor castle
(43:07):
white washing winter castle problem, copyrighted Dan Jones. Another thing
I also think, I mean, I I loved ethex Dogs,
I like I thought it was just I felt like
I was learning. This was a period of history I
didn't know much about, and it made a battle feel
so immediate and personal when I tend to be so
bored by military history. It was so brilliantly done. Your
(43:28):
characters are so well sketched, and I think that your
use of violence and gore is so well placed. You
don't use it gratuitously, but you convey how brutal these
battles were. Well. Thank you. And there's I don't read
a lot of military fiction, and I don't write. I
mean I sort of some of them the books. In
(43:50):
books like The Crusade, you can't get away from it,
but the political as well as military, and it's not
you know, I'm not a battle nerd, really, but I
am a kind of people. And if one of the
techniques that I tried, or the main technique I tried
to use an Essex Dogs in order not to have
very sort of either cliche or just like gratuitously unpleasant
(44:12):
battle scenes, was just a lock focus, super super tight
with one character and you follow mainly two characters. You
follow the group of characters, but you're locked with a
couple of viewpoints love Day and Romford through most of
Essex Dogs, and not as much as you. But I
have worked in TV as well as in writing, and
one of the directors I worked with on a show
(44:32):
a few years ago gave me a very good piece
of advice, which is, if you're having trouble writing your
way through a scene, just lock that camera on one
person's shoulder. I found that the more I did that
in Essex Dogs, the more the battles sort of gained
very similitude. And there's one which is the one I
suppose it's really is a crescy where for part of
it where with Romford and he's just on the floor,
(44:54):
just on the floor, and we could see his feet
have been kicking it. But then it's really but he
can't get a real can't get up, and you don't
see anything out like flashes, you see other stuff that
also I found, like, firstly, it freed me from having
to write endless, endlessly long boring battle scene, so you've
just got this like confused chaotic vision through one person's eyes.
(45:16):
But I found also enabled me to make jokes because
anyone who knows is invested in the history of the
Crescent Campaign will come to us themselves and we'll be
able to see where there are there's little easter eggs
for the homeboys, right, like if you know that the
Black Prince, if you if you heard about the Black Princes, go, well,
it wasn't actually true that the Black Prince wore black armor.
That's a Victorian myth. Right, let's st get this. Then
(45:39):
there's a there's a joke for you about why how
he gets that name and the way he acts when
someone offers to give him some black armor is like
it's but if you don't know. It doesn't marry says
in character, but the picking viewpoints that are attached closely
to one character, you know, usually a lonely part of
the of the social hierarchy. I just found I had
much been a ways of having jokes and subverting history
(46:03):
and messing around with it, and and I enjoyed myself
doing that a great deal. But then look, i'd have
written a novel before. It was all new to me,
and now you're doing another. There's a sequel coming out.
I believe it's part of a trilogy. It's number two
of a trilogy. Yeah, and I've gotta I gotta really
finished writing that thing. Yeah, get on it so that
(46:24):
I can have you back on and we can talk
about it again. Siege craft is different. Siege craft is very,
very different. Narrative challenge. I'm finally writing a the story
of a siege to the story of a campaign, a
military campaign. Is it's pretty easy? Like, oh, of course, yeah,
famously easy. All of us are thinking that. But what
(46:45):
you do, what you have built into it is narrative imperative.
It goes forward because the army is moving and all
you've got to well not all you've got to do.
But that the thing you've got to actually a thing
you've got to do with the battle campaign that's difficult
is not make it inevitable the way they go in,
and you've got to throw red herring after red herring
in and give them different diversion so that it's not
just that, well, they're on a train and the trains
(47:06):
go into the station. Stop them here. Yeah, the difference
of the siege is, man, this train isn't going anywhere
the Strangers station. It's going to be at the station
and delivering gets off. So it's very, very rich in
textural opportunity. Unless it a very teenage girl and a
horse who thinks she talks to God. It shows up.
(47:28):
That's good for your siege. You know that you said
about the trol with Calli's trouble with Keli. The trouble
is it's not or Lane no true what you do
have just in the same way, Elier, you've got Joan
of Arc and the White Horse and every you know
instantly when you say that, everyone knows what you're thinking
if they listen to this podcast. Anyway, I haven't done
a Joan of Arc episode, but I will. Well, you
(47:50):
gotta get Helen Caster to come and do it. She
is brilliant. Yeah, she's she's she's the best. Put that aside. Cali,
you have a very very very very very fam us
end to the siege. So if you've been to Calais,
there's a row down sculpture in Calais of the six
Burghers of Calais, and they're coming out with the nooses
around the next to offer their lives to Edward to
(48:12):
buy the freedom of everyone who's left in the city,
who's survived baiting, rats and horse leather and whatever, whatever, whatever.
And it's a really famous, really famous scene. And then
you have cause Edward says, no, you hang you all,
and his wife Siliver, oh please through that? Okay that
I won't. It's a bit more dramatic than that, more
paces in it than that impression suggested. But there are
(48:36):
things in Cali to write towards that. They're there from
the history, and so I've that's helpful. I love this.
I don't know anything about this. There's so much history, Dan,
That's the lesson of history, isn't it. There's there's tons
of it. Every time I think you've you've got to
handle on it there's some more comes along. I've been
reading nonstub history for a few years, doing this podcast constantly,
(48:57):
and I've never heard about these burgers coming out with
nooses or on their necks. The Rodance. Just doing google
the Rodan sculpture, because the Rodand sculpture, there's two of them.
There's another one, I think in London. Maybe I've not
long to make somewhere else. I made a couple of
films that like the Real History of Essence Dogs and
made them in the summer last year, and we went
to Calais and I said and looked at that Rodand sculpture,
(49:18):
and it's just I mean, obviously it's it's not fourteenth century,
it's Rodin, it's modern, but it's a sensational piece of
sculpture which each of these six Burgers has a different
form of grief conveyed by their mannerisms in their face,
and they are what's amazing about it is that he
has given them individual character. And when we think about
(49:39):
so many of these set pieces from medieval history, if
it's not the king or someone like near the level
of the King, or Joan of Arc or whatever, they're
just sort of generic noble or generic knight or generic
peasant or generic archer or whatever. And what road Down
does so brilliantly in that sculpture is say, these were
real people, each one individual at each with a different
(50:02):
reaction to this what we now see as a sort
of a fixed historical tableau. And row Down is in
a measurably greater artist than I will ever be, obviously,
but the I don't know, he never owned as sex dogs. Well,
but the aim is to capture some of that, is
to say, like an army of fifteen thousand is fifteen individuals,
(50:23):
and each one of them with their own take on
the thing that they're experiencing. And when we think of
medieval archer, yeah, okay, that's like that's a type. That's
somebody who shoots a pretty similar bow with a similar
arrow out of a similar bow and a similar place.
But each one of those people was an individual, and
(50:44):
and in the realm of fiction at least, that gives
you such rich opportunity to do things with the past
that nonfiction doesn't always allowed to do. So that's for
me why I've enjoyed my little gap here. Fiction brilliantly said,
A six dogs comes out in America February fourteen. I
(51:05):
believe makes a great balance and take the week before. Yeah,
it's it's a pregame to immortality. Are I'm I'm twenty eight,
two weeks before. It's okay, but plenty of time to
read it and get ready for immortality. Your February could
be sensationally good fiction wise, couldn't right? Get a good
(51:28):
Valentine's Day gift for the medieval history lover in your life. Yeah,
and then get a get book after that. Yeah, thank
you so much for joining me. Uh, clearly when you're
ready to go to bed. This is this is what
I planned. Fire sell roll from straight into vice slumber.
(51:49):
And next time I'm in London, will you take me
on another tour? Can we go do something? Yeah? What
you want to say? I'm coming this summer, are you? Yeah,
I'm leading at tore to Cornwall, but I'm going to
be in London for a bit. Okay. So we went
to Westminster Abbey last time, didn't we? Yeah? I got
a personal tour from Dan Jones in Westminster Abbey. Not
to brag, but it was. It was wonderful. We had
(52:11):
to queue up. I've never done that before. It was.
I know. He was like, he's like, you're on TV.
You don't have to wait line. Well, what don't we
go to the Tower of London. Done, I'm there, let's
do it. Tower of London is good. Yeah, we'll do that. Great.
I'll see you this summer, and I'll see you even
sooner because we're talking about your book again for your launch.
Oh and then I'm coming to l a al, I'm
(52:32):
coming to see Iggy Pop. You're going to get so tired.
I'll see you so much. This is good. I know,
this is fantastic. Great, order Dan's book. Dan, I'll see
you so soon. Noble Blood is a production of Art
(53:00):
Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron
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Dana Schwartz
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