Summary
Professor Alice Roberts, best known as the presenter of Digging for Britain, picks the wife of two English kings and the mother of two English kings. Queen Emma was born in Normandy and came to England as a diplomatic peaceweaver when she married Aethelred in 1002. Somehow she survived the invasion of the Danes under Swein Forkbeard and married his son, King Canute after Aethelred's death. Together with help from Professor Janina Ramirez - author of Femina - and Patricia Bracewell who has written a trilogy of historical novels based on Emma's life, Alice pieces together an extraordinary life, the richest woman in England, aunt of William the Conqueror, mother of Edward the Confessor.
Alice Roberts is Professor of Public Engagement in Science at Birmingham University and the author of Crypt: Life, Death and Disease in the Middle Ages and Beyond Programme also includes recorded audio of Professor Pauline Stafford, author of Gendering the Middle Ages
The producer in Bristol is Miles Warde
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Helena Bonkarter and this is history's secret heroes. |
| 0:07.0 | In this series we'll hear stories of daring secret missions and rarely heard tales from World War II, like Emily, the enigmatic high-ranking |
| 0:17.2 | codebreaker, and Tremont, the escape artist, interned in a German camp. |
| 0:24.0 | Tales of danger, dynamism and downright determination. |
| 0:27.8 | The new series of history's secret heroes. |
| 0:30.5 | Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:33.0 | BBC Sounds. |
| 0:34.0 | BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts. |
| 0:39.0 | Today's guest here in Bristol is Alice Roberts, |
| 0:42.0 | Anatomist, author, professor of public engagement in science |
| 0:47.0 | and presenter of Digging for Britain since 2010. That's a TV series about archaeology, but to me, Alice, you'll always be famous for a cameo |
| 0:57.2 | in the detectorists a couple of Christmases ago. What is it about metal detecting obsessives and you? |
| 1:05.0 | That was lovely. That was, it was on my bucket list, I have to say. |
| 1:09.0 | But they're looking for coins, you're looking for bones. |
| 1:11.0 | I mean, it's worth adding that Alice trained as a doctor, worked as a doctor, has a PhD in |
| 1:16.3 | paleopathology, the study of ancient injury and disease, and welcome to great lives. |
| 1:22.6 | Thank you very much. |
| 1:23.6 | Now as the late Queen Elizabeth, a later queen than the one you've nominated was, |
| 1:28.1 | won't to say, have you come far? |
| 1:30.9 | Not that far because I live just over the Clifton's Ascension Bridge. |
| 1:34.5 | You travel over that suspension bridge and you're immediately into the wonderful leafy realm of |
| 1:39.9 | North Somerset, so that is my home. And which Queen have you picked and why? I've |
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