Hello, Dan here. Season 2 is still on the way, but to tide you over, here's one of our

subscriber episodes from This Is History Plus. We're plugging the series gap with interviews

with some of my favourite historians to chat about all things Plantagenet and Medieval

history. This time, I'm joined by Tobias Capwell, curator of arms and armour at the Wallace

Collection and a leading authority on Medieval violence. I hope you enjoy it. See you at the end.

Great to have you Toby. Thanks for inviting me. I'm particularly excited to be talking to you

today because yesterday I went jousting. Really? Really, first time. Huh, where? In Warwickshire. Uh-huh.

You and I have talked over the years about knights and about riding and about jousting and about

fighting and horseback and I've always been very conscious that you know what you're talking about

and I think I'm right in saying and do it, right? Yeah, I try. I mean, I've, this is an interest

that I've had since I was a kid and you know children, they want to do things. I wanted to be a

knight a long time before I wanted to be a curator in a museum and when you approach a childhood

interest, you try and do it. I knew the knights were, were horsemen so I convinced my mother eventually

to let me learn how to ride and I learned whatever martial arts I could learn and it's just kind of

gone from there. The academic career is a byproduct. Do you remember when you first became

interested in knights for the moment? I think the earliest memory that I have is being taken to

the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City when I was about five years old and the Met has

one of the world's greatest collections of medieval Renaissance arms and armor. They have a

displayed in this gorgeous daylight gallery with sunlight flooding in and the centerpiece of

the displays is a series of around seven equestrian figures, fully armored horses with riders

displayed that way and it just, it was an awe-inspiring experience and I was at once

impressed by the power and the kind of other worldliness of these creatures but then at the same

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