Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

What secrets can medieval human remains unlock? Broadcaster and academic Professor Alice Roberts is the presenter of the BBC's

Digging for Britain series and an expert on the study of human bones. Using cutting edge science,

she's unearthed fascinating details about how individuals lived and died that give us new glimpses

into the past. David Musgrove caught up

with Alice to talk about her latest book, Crypt, and what archaeology can tell us about the

Middle Ages. I'm delighted to be joined by Professor Alice Roberts, who is author of Crypt,

life, death and disease in the Middle Ages and Beyond. So you say in your

intro that the book is a focus on pathology, on disease and injury and the experience of

human suffering in the past. Is this going to be a cheery chat that we have? I do say that in

the introduction that these are not comforting tales. I suppose you can draw some comfort from them in that you can be very, very pleased that you live in the 21st century.

And medicine has moved on a bit since the Middle Ages.

It's, well, it's completely different.

I mean, those poor people in the Middle Ages were subject to all sorts of diseases for which they had no

treatment, no cure, you know, no antibiotics, no vaccinations, and really no medicines that did much

good. It is brutal. And the stories in the book are about the most brutal of diseases.

So the plague, you know, the black death that swept through in the 14th

century carried off between a third and a half of the European population. It's quite appalling

to even think about that, to think about that impact. So we've just lived through a pandemic,

obviously, which was devastating.

We lost nearly quarter of a million people over the last few years to COVID.

But if we compare that with the Black Death in the 14th century,

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