Okay, Afwa, it's my great excitement to be taking you into the Middle Ages. Is that a subject

that you're interested in generally? Do you love your crusades, do your castles and barons?

That's not a simple opening question, Peter. I am super curious about history, as you know well.

One of the reasons I love talking to you. I'm fascinated by the Middle Ages. I have been a little

alienated over the years and through the long years of my formal education by the mid-aged. I have been a little alienated over the years and through the long

years of my formal education by the kind of glamorisation of the crusades, which to me always

seemed like a series of really horrific atrocities that we should mourn rather than really exciting

battles by bold knights and bloodthirsty warfare for the Holy Land. Like it just didn't sit well on

multiple levels. And I think maybe that put me off an area, which actually I think does have a lot

to offer me. So it's one of the reasons I love talking to you because it feels like a more

nuanced conversation. That's a very diplomatic answer. I wasn't sure also whether you said

bald nights or bold nights, but I like the idea

lots of people with very bad hair trying to attack castles. But the Middle Ages is also the time of

great literature, of Chaucer, of Petrog, of Boccaccio, of storytelling, of thinking about some of those

big global connections, as the Mongols build their great empires. I mean, maybe I can talk you around to it about doing something on the Crusades too, because there are, you know, like everything, there's, I don't want to say pluses and minuses, but you can think about these, those ideas about nightly piety and what the crusaders think they're doing, maybe in slightly different ways. But what about things

like the Lini Tower of Pisa? Is that something that you've, have you been up, have you been up

the Lili Tower? Do you like those Italian cities that speak of the Middle Ages? I do. I love them. I

haven't been up the Lening Tower Pisa. I have seen it. I find visiting medieval sites in Italy

fascinating all over Europe and actually also all over

Africa. I mean, I've been to Timbuktu, I've been to Jenei, I've been to a number of ancient

cities in Africa and that's another reason why I think a lot of the literature I was exposed to

about the Middle Ages felt limited because it confined it to a very European setting

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