Welcome to the British History Podcast.

My name is Jamie and this is Episode 388, the stupid before the storm.

This show is ad-free due to members' support and as a way of thanking members for keeping

the show independent, I offer members only content including extra episodes and left transcripts

and you can get instant access to all the members' extras by signing up for membership

at theBritishHistoryPodGaz.com for about the price of a latte per month and thank you

very much to Nicholas, Clara and Keith for signing up already.

We left off in the court of King Harold, Hadrata and you probably feel like you know a lot about

this man by now.

There's the stories about the Empress and his time as a Varrangian and his reputation

is a seductive warrior poet.

And all of the, oh my god this guy is really hot stories, really worth circulating around

him.

Like enough that if you're going to cast Harold Hadrata for your 1066 movie, you probably

want to cast him with Jason Momoa.

But the thing is that Harold was a person and he had a lot more going on and simply being

really ridiculously good looking.

And while the stories about Harold's sex appeal are hilariously awesome, which is why

bring them up so often, the fact was that Harold had many more sides to him.

And for Harold, the other aspects of his life were, well, kind of scary.

This is a man who had become a legend because he'd spent his life going a Viking.

He was a true Viking king with all that it entailed and these people were not cute.

...