A History of Britain in 50 Documents

Gone Medieval

History Hit

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4.6 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2022

⏱️ 33 minutes

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Summary

How do you go about finding your way around the history of a nation and a national identity? For the barrister and author Dominic Selwood, documents are the perfect window through which to watch a country develop and change. His new book Anatomy of a Nation: A History of British Identity in 50 Documents explores more than 950,000 years of history by examining those documents that tell the story of what has made Britain unique.

In this podcast, Matt Lewis talks to Dominic Selwood particularly about the Medieval documents he’s chosen, including the Magna Carta, Joan of Arc’s letter to King Henry VI, and the emergence of the stories of King Arthur.

The Senior Producer on this episode was Elena Guthrie. It was edited and produced by Rob Weinberg.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	If you're a fan of the podcast, I've got some exciting news for you. We're publishing a book.
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0:24.8	This episode is sponsored by the London Review of Books, Europe's leading magazine of books
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1:20.5	That's a saving of 94% off the cover price. Go to lrb.me forward slash hit now.
1:33.2	Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. How do you go about
1:37.9	finding your way around the history of a nation and a national identity? Well for Dominic Sauer
1:43.8	documents are the perfect window through which to watch a country develop and change. Dominic's book
1:50.9	Anatomy of a Nation, a history of British identity in 50 documents explores almost a million
1:57.6	years of history in the British Isles and Dominic joins us today to talk about the medieval element
2:03.2	of that story. Great to have you with us Dominic. Hi Matt. Thanks very much for inviting me.
	...

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