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Hello and welcome to Life of the Week from History Extra, where leading historians delve into the lives of history's most intriguing and significant figures.

King John has a terrible reputation. He's best known as the monarch who broke the terms of

Magna Carta, lost Normandy to the French and committed numerous acts of unspeakable cruelty.

Here in conversation with Spencer Misen, Nicholas Vincent considers if John really was as bad as all that or if indeed he was even worse.

Hello Nick, thank you very much for joining us today.

We're going to discuss the life of King John of England.

Now most of our listeners will I'm sure have heard of John, whether it's through Magna Carta, his War of Barons, or indeed

his role is one of the principal villains in Robin Hood.

However, I wonder if you could set the scene by giving us a brief introduction to John.

Who was he in a nutshell?

So John was the youngest son of the first Plantagenet King of England, Henry the second.

And he reined from 1199 when his elder brother Richard the Lionheart died through to his death in 1216 and he's generally seen as by far the

worst king in English history one of the great villains of world history,

partly because of what he did,

and partly because of what he didn't.

...