october 2021

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2 october

Ivanhoe and the Invention of Merry England
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There are some things that almost any Hollywood film set in the Middle Ages can count on. It will be set in England. There will be a lot of forests. The Norman nobility will oppress the Saxon peasantry. Other things are optional but frequent. There may be a tournament or a siege. There may be a reference to the Crusades. Robin Hood may turn up. There may be a trial for witchcraft. Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe contains all of these things, and since its publication in 1819, this runaway bestseller has helped to shape Anglophone ideas of the Middle Ages. 

Podcaster: Lucy

16 october

Ivanhoe and the Modern Middle Ages

How did Ivanhoe become a wildly popular school text? And what happened to the interpretation of the text when it did? Across the Anglophone world, Scott’s medieval England became reified as a time and place of chivalric adventure, despite the novel’s often ironic tone and often pointed social criticisms. This episode examines how Sir Walter Scott’s imagined past became something very different as it was reinterpreted in popular culture, in sometimes sinister ways.

Podcaster: Lucy

30 october

History for Halloween VIII

Oh my gosh, we're back again! Our annual tradition continues as this year we bring you yet another round of creepy and fantastic history for the scariest holiday of the year.