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Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves

into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries,

the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings

to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents

to delve into rebellions, plots and murders to find the stories big and small that tell us how we got

here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval.

Richard the Lionheart was so famous that his statue was placed outside the houses of Parliament

in Westminster, a monument to English greatness, to chivalry, to the flower of medieval

heroism. Now get this, that St Richard spent less than six months of his 10-year reign actually

in England. He probably didn't even speak English. And one of his greatest military adventures,

the crusade that made him a legend, was, in all honesty, a bit of a failure.

For the past 800 years, we've been telling ourselves stories about Richard the Lionheart.

We've put King Arthur's sword Excalibur into his hands, whispered that he was the son of the devil,

invented elaborate fantasies about him

eating his enemy's flesh, immortalised him in novels and films, and most recently made him

...