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Hello, the story of Tristan and Isolt was one of the most popular of the Middle Ages.

From its roots in Celtic myths, it passed into written form in Britain a century after

the Norman conquest and almost immediately spread throughout Northern Europe.

It tells of a Cornish knight and an Irish queen Tristan and Isolt, who accidentally drink

a love potion at the same time, on the same boat traveling into Cornwall where she is

to marry someone else.

They have no choice, they consummate their love at sea and from that point must navigate

the physical and moral dangers that follow.

In one version he slanted dragon, she had saved him from certain death, they were a perfect

match, their love was heroic, but could that excuse that adultery in the minds of medieval

listeners, particularly when the church was so clear they were wrong.

Giving me to discuss Tristan and Isolt are Laura Ash, Associate Professor of English at

Worcester College University of Oxford, Juliet Wood, Associate Lecturer in the School of

Welsh at Cardiff University and Mark Kenka, reader in Medieval German literature at the

University of Cambridge.

Juliet Wood, we've said the roots of the story are Celtic, would you tell us where you

think the origins of it are?

Well the origins are really in the international story patterns that you find in Celtic tales.

And one of them is Irish, the story of Deirdre, Deirdre of the Sorrows, who is forced to

...