Welcome to the British History Podcast.

My name is Jamie and this is Episode 316.

Athol Red, the old guard.

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And thank you very much to Gunner, Lester and Victoria for signing up already.

Before we get back to our story, I've been seeing your conversations online and it

made me realize that I need to clarify something.

Some of you have taken the discussion of Athol Red's unflattering nickname and how he

caught hell for some things that were actually kind of out of his control and part of the

common culture and took that to mean that the BHP is arguing that Athol Red was a good

king.

He wasn't.

He was an awful king in many respects.

But what I'm trying to convey here and what I'm hoping you'll get out of this series

is that the story of Athol Red and how bad his reign was was a great deal more complicated

and nuanced than the stories regarding his reign imply.

The truth is that leaders tend to get all the credit for all kinds of things that the

only marginally are involved in.

And this is especially the case if those things are bad.

...