Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?

It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.

Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.

BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.

Hello, I'm Shah Hadabari, and in this episode of the BBC Arts and Ideas podcast,

we're focusing on new academic research in the humanities in the early modern period.

So, good day to thee.

Privy, take a seat and settle in for the next half hour as we take a ramble through Renaissance culture.

Do put away your long swords, though, because we'll be finding out about good manners, gossip and

material goods, all with a great deal of dignity and decorum of course. New Generation Thinker

and Renaissance scholar at the University of Leeds, John Galaher's here to be my guide.

He'll be the Sir Walter Rally to my Elizabeth I. Hopefully he'll be bringing me more than a pouch of tobacco to this chat. Will you, John? Do my best. I actually spent a lot of money on this doublet, only to find it that this is for radio. So thanks a lot. You're all looking very dashing. Thank you very much. And Emily Butterworth from the Department of French at King's College London.

Emily, you can't be Mary Queen of Scots because, spoiler, she gets it in the neck. Who could you be? Could I be someone French? Could I be Marguerite de Navarre? Not exactly the same period as YouTube, but still, we can have some kind of ghostly communication maybe she's got a much sexier name than us sorry

lise was marguer marguerite de navarre who was she she was the sister of king francis

the first and queen of navarre and also very intensely involved in the diplomacy of the period

so knew a lot of english diplomats talked to a lot of English diplomats.

Ooh, she sounds like she would have had a really good wardrobe as well with a name like that.

We're getting distracted.

We'll also be hearing from other researchers that John's been talking to later on in the program.

But let's start with you first, John, because it's only polite to begin with the definition,

ease us in gently. You've been working on the idea of good manners and civility. What do we mean by civility in this early modern period? So, Shahadha, civility is one of these terms that changes in use and kind of applies to all sorts of different areas of life in early modern

England and in early modern Europe. It actually doesn't start off just being about manners.

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