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Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval, I'm Matt Lewis. The second barren's war was a period

of huge instability and upheaval in England in the second half of the 13th century. The first

barren's war had led to Magna Carta and almost seen England conquered by France. An England

was still finding its way through a new relationship with the Crown. Ian Ross has set his latest

historical fiction novel Battlesong right in the heart of this febrile atmosphere of rebellion

and mistrust but also in the excitement of the tournament circuit on the continent.

Ian's research is clear in the story that he writes so I wanted to chat to him about the book

and about the events it's set against so thank you very much for joining us Ian.

Hello Matt. I guess to start off with can you tell us why you chose to set

Battlesong, why you chose to set a novel on the eve of the second barren's war?

Well I think probably like a lot of your listeners I've always been greatly fascinated in the

medieval world. In fact it's kind of surprising that it took me so long to get to writing stories

about it. My previous books were set in the late Roman world, the era of the Emperor Constantine

and I've been really working on that for about 10 years now but I've had this growing desire

to write a story about the Middle Ages but it was only really when I started looking into the

history of the period and looking into the history of the 13th century in particular and I came

across the second barren's war and everything that involved that I've realized that I'd found

...