Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild from

Aaron Manky, listener discretion advised.

Hi everybody, welcome to a very special episode of Noble Blood. I am so excited to

be here talking with the incredible historian Helen Carr who wrote a really

wonderful book called The Red Prince all about John of Gaunt. I would say one of

the less explored sons of Edward III, Helen, welcome to Noble Blood.

Thank you so much for having me. What brought you to John of Gaunt and for those who

maybe don't know, how would you probably more eloquently than I just did,

describe who he was in medieval history? So I came to John of Gaunt many, many years

ago I had just moved to London as opposed to graduate and I was starting to get

used to life in the big city and being such a history geek as I always have been

my whole life. One of the things I wanted to do in my time off was going to

explore some of the lesser known areas of London, the historic areas of London.

And so I spent my weekends walking around the Tower of London, really cool

places that I suppose is such a luxury for me. I get to just go and do that but I

suppose a lot of your listeners won't be able to just go to all these incredible

castles and things but it is really cool and there is so much history there.

And I heard about this place called the Savoy Palace which I knew was around

the area of the Savoy Hotel which is a very famous hotel in London if you're

familiar with it. And I wanted to go and see if anything remained and when I got

there I found it remarkable that there was literally nothing that was there

apart from like a few plaques and one of the plaques said this was the home of

...