Richard the Lionheart
Great Lives
BBC
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 16 May 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Richard the Lionheart has been portrayed on screen by Sean Connery, Anthony Hopkins and Patrick Stewart, quite a starry list. But what is the reality behind the legend of this famous king?
Richard's nominator is Timmy Mallett, a legend of children's TV but also unexpectedly a history graduate. Great historical characters, he says, have great stories attached to them, and Richard's life was not short of adventure, particularly on the Third Crusade.
Applying a cool head to Richard's life is the historian and broadcaster Helen Castor. She concedes that much of Timmy's enthusiasm is probably deserved.
Presenter Matthew Parris attempts to discover the truth about whether the Lionheart was in fact gay.
Producer: Miles Warde.
Produced in BBC Bristol and first broadcast on Radio 4 in May 2016.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Great Lives is a download from Radio 4. |
| 0:02.7 | We hope you enjoy what you're about to hear. |
| 0:05.2 | Today's Great Life has been portrayed by Sean Connery, |
| 0:08.0 | Anthony Hopkins, Patrick Stewart, |
| 0:10.1 | so quite a starry list. |
| 0:12.0 | Walt Disney portrayed him as a lion, perhaps a clue there, |
| 0:15.4 | and he's always cropping up in video games too. We'll let you know who he is in a while. |
| 0:20.6 | Here in the studio choosing our our great life, is another legendary figure, not from history but from children's TV, Timothy Mallet, better known to a certain generation as Timmy, famous for his foam mallet as he is for the itssy-bitzy-bitsy-tini-weeny yellow polka-dot bikini that he took back to the top of the charts. |
| 0:41.0 | Less well known is that Timmy is a history graduate and this |
| 0:44.6 | definitely informs his choice today. Whom have you chosen Timmy? Oh my great |
| 0:49.6 | pleasure to come out with a wonderful hero, Richard the Lionheart. |
| 0:53.7 | Yeah. |
| 0:54.7 | He's just a fabulous all-round top guy. |
| 0:57.3 | In a nutshell, why? |
| 0:58.4 | He has a boy's own legend status about him. |
| 1:02.4 | He takes on great battles, wins most of them, does deals |
| 1:06.2 | when he can't win them, and he runs this enormous empire, goes on crusade, gets |
| 1:11.7 | himself kidnapped on the way home, fabulous stuff he does and of course he died spectacularly, |
| 1:17.0 | the lion killed by a flee. Richard the Lion Hart, King of England from 1189 until 1199, as famous perhaps for his |
| 1:26.2 | exploits in the Third Crusade as his imprisonment and ransom. |
| 1:30.7 | And also the fact that he spent just some six months in the country of which he was supposed to be king. |
| 1:36.0 | How much do you actually know about his life? |
... |
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