Hello and welcome to the History of England, episode 44, introducing Richard I. So we finally

arrived at Richard the Lionheart. Richard has always been something of a hero of mine,

and since I never covered him in serious historical study, my entire image of him comes from

the ladybird, children's histories. And you know, I have a feeling that a 12-year-old's

view of Richard may actually be a bit closer to the medieval view than the modern analytical

scientific historians. Because to medieval Christendom and to medieval Islam, Richard

was a hero, a colossus. He's still one of the big figures of popular history, but as

you draw round discussion sites, it's covered with a whole load of qualification, mainly

focusing on the fact that Richard was most definitely a French speaker and only spent

six months in England. Anyway, I'm very excited. But now that I prefaced his podcast

with Richard, I'm going to completely change direction. Because I did have a bunch of

stuff I wanted to cover in 12th century social area, and I didn't get round to it. I've

been looking for an excuse to cover it ever since, and not found one. So I've decided

to stop trying to be clever and just do it. There were three things I didn't manage to

cover, and one of them was on medieval manners. So in today's episode, we're going to spend

a few minutes on medieval manners, and then we're going to spend the rest of the episode

about the rather fascinating historiography of Richard and cover the background of his

life up to the death of his father without hesitation or repetition.

So our Ange of Imperiod sees the start of a grand English tradition, the courtesy book,

good practical advice on how to behave in company. Daniel Beckles wrote his poem on civilised

man at the start of the 13th century, and this is considered to be the very first of these

type. I really don't know how much light it throws on how people really behaved, but

...