Welcome to the History Extra podcast. Did you know that Elizabeth and Londoners were good kisses?

That medieval drinkers used beer to fight off the flames of a raging inferno, and that Jane Austen doesn't paint an entirely accurate picture of the early 19th century. These are just

some of the facts served up in Ian Mortimer's new history of England, and here, in conversation with

Spencer Mizzen, Ian takes us on an immersive tour of the nation's past. So, Ian, your new book follows a series

of A to Z talks you've been giving to audiences around the country over the last little while.

I wonder if you could tell us a bit about those talks and how they inspired you to write this book.

The A to Zs, well, they began as a means of promoting my time traveller's guide to Elizabethan

England. So the second in the series, it's very difficult to promote a time traveller's guide.

I started off with the medieval one, going to various places, and there was quite a call for me to go

and talk about medieval time travellers. And I found myself in various places. I always try and sort of

start where I was giving the talk and describe walking down the streets in the 14th century. It became

extremely burdensome in terms of getting everything right, talking to local audiences, of course,

who know their environment far better than you can after a few hours of research. And I was thinking,

this isn't going very well. I need some way of encapsulating this period in an enjoyable way

that is easier to promote. And I came across the idea of an ATAZ for Elizabethan England. And I tried it out. And the very first one was, I think it was in Sirensester. And I was speaking alongside Mark Morris. I was going first. He was going second. And I just enjoyed my ATAZD of Elizabethan England so much that Mark had to get up after I got to M. And he said, look, for God's sake, I need to do a talk too. And I just realized that moment when he interrupted me, this is actually going to go really well when I've got the stage to myself. And so I did one for all of the books. And I went back and did one for medieval as well. And they became really good fun performance pieces because they were always ad-lived. There was an awful lot of character in there. But also you can jump really

quickly from factual material which is going to hit people to or surprise people to something

which has got pathos or whatever. I mean, you can change the mood. So they became a very versatile way

of talking about the past. And did you find that they landed well with the audiences? Oh, yes. By far the most entertaining talks I've ever done. Obviously, there are some talks where you're giving a specific relation of their local, no, some local talks or some thematic talks are perfectly seated. But generally speaking, you can adapt the talk as you're going along, because all you got is that A to Z structure.

Everybody knows the alphabet, and I would be frequently told at the end, oh, I was meant to be

catching a train, but I had to hang on and see what you would say about X, Y and Z. So clearly

people really enjoyed it. And as a result, I sort of increasingly tailored them to the audiences

for the purposes of enjoyment.

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