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sign up to Empire Club at www.empowerpod.ukuk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnons.

And me, William Durunple.

And we continue our series on Gaza. With this episode, we're going to be talking

about the Christian conquests of the Crusades in the 11th and 12th centuries. And our very special guest

is Jonathan Phillips, Professor of Crusading History at Royal Holloway College, University of London.

He is the author of the magnificent, The life and legend of the Sultan Saladin.

Welcome to Empire. We're so happy to have you. Thank you.

Thank you very much for asking me.

Now there's something with the Crusades, and I can attest to this, where people think they know all about it because it is covered at school.

I mean, I can't tell you last year, I made a shield for a, and then nine-year-old.

Yeah, I don't know how that helped him imbibe the entire history of the region, but hot glue was involved.

So I feel like I'm sort of part of this story now, Jonathan.

You're rather good at that kind of thing, aren't you?

You're very good at sort of making.

I've seen your house full of sort of top flight shields and sort of industrial

revolution factories and all sorts of stuff. We're big believers in, well, I mean, I am.

People are quite like doing it with them. I think they've lost interest, but I'm thrilled when

they have a make and do project. I also studied Crusades at school, and I remember it was

the thing that first directed me to the Middle East. And in fact, I walked when I was 20 in the

footsteps of the first crusade, followed the route of Robert Kurtos, through France, down Italy,

...