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TV. Brilliant. BBC

1:00

Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts.

1:28

In History Corner, she's Professor of Medieval Literature and

1:30

the Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies at

1:33

the University of York. She specialises

1:35

in the literary culture of England from the 9th

1:37

to the 12th century. She's particularly interested in medieval

1:39

English queens. It's Professor Elizabeth Tyler.

1:41

Welcome, Elizabeth. Hi, thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

1:44

Oh, we're delighted to have you here. And

1:46

in Comedy Corner, she's a stand-up comedian, actor and writer.

1:48

You'll have seen her on all the telly shows, including

1:50

Live at the Apollo, Mock the Week, Frankie

1:52

Boyle's New World Order, perhaps you've seen her on tour,

1:55

or read her hilariously honest memoir, The

1:57

Other Mother, about the challenges of... I've

2:00

got the audiobook. It's excellent. It's Jen Brister.

2:02

Welcome to the show, Jen. Oh, Greg,

2:04

it's an absolute pleasure. I have

2:06

to do the contractually obligated question with

2:09

Baited Breath. Do you like history? I

2:11

do, actually. I'm intrigued by history. Like when I was

2:13

young, I was like, oh, what's the point? Why

2:16

are we learning about things that have happened? And

2:18

I'm thinking, maybe we should go back. Let's delve

2:20

back and see what we can learn from

2:22

history. Yeah. What about medieval history? I

2:25

know zero. Now,

2:28

I did study it. I mean, I say study. Do

2:31

you be studying when you're at primary school? I did

2:33

sit in a room while someone talked at me about

2:35

medieval history. OK. You know

2:37

the usual, the William the Conqueror and the

2:39

Battle of Hastings and all of that. But

2:42

I think it really started and ended there. So,

2:45

what do you know? This

2:51

is where I have a go at guessing

2:53

what you, our lovely listener, will know about

2:55

today's subject. And when I say Emma of

2:57

Normandy, I think everyone's going to be thinking,

2:59

Emma who? You've possibly heard of her son,

3:01

King Edward the Confessor? His death

3:04

in 1066 led to the Little Cuffuffle, known

3:06

as the Norman Conquest and the Baya Tapestry,

3:08

which, of course, is what our artwork is

3:10

based on. But Emma herself, absolute

3:13

tumbleweed. But who is this

3:15

fairly unknown medieval English queen? How did she

3:17

end up being Queen of England not once,

3:19

but spoiler alert, twice? And

3:21

what was the dating scene like for royal women

3:24

in the 11th century? Let's find out. Let's

3:26

start with some historical context because this is

3:28

complicated stuff. So, we often define the medieval

3:30

period on this show as lasting 1,000 years,

3:34

from the fall of the Western Roman

3:36

Empire to the Protestant Reformation. When

3:39

in that 1,000 years do we find

3:41

Emma? Where does she pop up? She was born probably

3:43

985 and died in 1052. And

3:47

then we're talking here about Normandy. So,

3:50

Jen, what do you know about medieval Normandy? Well,

3:53

I'm assuming it's France. Is

3:55

that not what France was known as as Normandy?

3:57

Am I completely... You're looking at me like, no,

3:59

done. whole

10:00

lot of Danes in 1002, so that

10:02

raid on Exeter might also have been

10:04

in retaliation for that.

10:07

Things get even more complicated now, you won't

10:09

believe this, but Ethelred's first wife had

10:11

been called Elf-Gee-Voo. Ethelred

10:14

had been married before. And

10:16

he made Emma change her name to

10:18

Elf-Gee-Voo. Elf-Gee-Voo. It's not as catchy.

10:20

So his first wife dies, he's got a

10:23

second wife, a young wife, Emma. Her name

10:25

is quite clearly Emma, he's introduced her as

10:27

Emma, she's very much named Emma. And he's

10:29

like, do you know what? How about Elf-Gee-Voo?

10:33

Elizabeth, Emma has done her duty of marrying Ethelred,

10:35

the unready or the not yet ready or

10:37

the yet to be unready, I don't know whether

10:39

he's been named yet. And her job

10:42

I suppose is to have children, to have an

10:44

heir, that's what queens are for. Does she manage

10:46

this, you know, does she pop out of Prince?

10:48

Oh yes, she does. And pretty quickly.

10:50

So Edward, that's our Edward the Confessor

10:53

who's going to turn up later, was

10:55

born sometime between 1003 and 1005. And then she

10:57

has another son, Alfred,

11:00

so she's got two, an heir and a spare, and

11:03

a daughter God-Gee-Voo. Gift of

11:05

God. God-Gee-Voo. Oh, that's

11:07

a lot to live up to, isn't it? Yeah.

11:10

Oh, you think you're God's gift. That's not my fault, it's

11:12

my name, mate. You shut up. She has an

11:14

heir and a spare, Emma. They

11:16

are Alfred and Edward. I mean, I guess that

11:18

gives her a bit more stability and power. Absolutely.

11:20

She's called Con La Torana Regis, which

11:22

means she who is at the king's

11:25

side. We're going to watch out for

11:27

that because she's learning a lot about

11:29

how to be King of England, which

11:31

she's going to teach someone else later.

11:34

Interesting. Let's just drop that

11:36

little hint. Okay. So this cozy

11:38

family scene that we've established, it's

11:40

disturbed quite dramatically in the year

11:44

So if we jump forward 10 years, Jen, we

11:47

get another surprise Danish invasion and they

11:49

don't just trash Exeter this time. They

11:51

steal the entire kingdom. Oh my goodness.

11:53

Yeah. Ethelred is booted off the throne.

11:55

He loses his throne. The new King

11:57

of England has a fantastic name. He's

11:59

called Swain Forkbeard. He

12:02

also has Denmark and Norway so this is

12:04

his third kingdom and guess

12:07

how long this new mighty imperial

12:09

king Swain Forkbeard rules England for

12:12

Jen? Three years. Five

12:14

weeks. Yeah

12:21

he drops dead immediately. The crucial question is

12:23

Ethelred is not being killed. So he's still

12:25

hanging around. He's still hanging around. Has he

12:27

done a runner? Where is Emma? Where are

12:29

her kids? Where is Ethelred at this point?

12:31

So Emma and the kids go straight to

12:33

Normandy and Ethelred follows and

12:36

it's hard to know if this

12:38

was a temporary tactical retreat. I mean

12:40

it couldn't have been fun hanging out

12:42

in Normandy for Ethelred but after Swain's

12:44

sudden death the question arises could he

12:46

make a comeback or is

12:49

Swain's son Canute going to succeed him?

12:52

You would think with that kind of absolutely

12:54

apopleptic shame of being knocked off by Forkbeard

12:56

that you'd be like listen I've got to

12:58

hide under a bin for a girl. I'm

13:00

going to come out again and show my

13:02

face. Does he go no? I'm

13:06

going back. So Ethelred does come

13:08

back keen to get away from

13:10

his in-laws but the Danes have

13:13

chosen Canute who's Swain's son so

13:15

there's a whole tussle between Canute

13:17

and Ethelred and Ethelred comes out

13:19

on top temporarily in 1014 but

13:22

then he dies in 1016. Meanwhile

13:25

Emma's oldest son Edward he's only 11

13:27

or 12 so he's got

13:29

no hope of being the candidate chosen to

13:32

take on the Danish fleet and

13:34

all this time we're not actually sure where

13:36

Emma is. Is she in London? Is she

13:38

in Normandy? And what role

13:40

she played in opposing Canute?

13:42

And this then leaves Emma

13:45

exposed because her

13:47

husband is dead, her children are threats,

13:51

she's a threat. So is

13:53

that something that Canute is worried about? I've

13:56

heard of this guy. I've heard of King Canute.

13:58

I've got a feeling he's not a guy to be

14:00

messed with. I'm hoping you're

14:02

going to tell me, Elizabeth, that Emma

14:04

goes gone blazing and takes her 12-year-old

14:06

son and points him under

14:08

her armpit and away they go

14:10

and takes on King Canoe. Is that

14:13

what happens? No, they go off to

14:15

hide out in Normandy. Oh, what? So

14:17

Edward and his little brother Alfred head

14:20

off to Normandy. Canoe is trouble because

14:22

what he does is he murders

14:24

another prince named Eadwig, whose Ethelred's last

14:26

remaining son with Elkifu I. So

14:29

he's trying to get rid of all these people.

14:32

What do you think Emma does next, Jen?

14:34

Her husband is dead. The man who defeated

14:36

her husband is dead. The son of that

14:38

man is now the King of England. What

14:40

do you think she does? Well,

14:42

I imagine she tries to find an

14:45

alliance. And maybe

14:47

she tries to find an alliance

14:49

by marrying somebody that could help

14:51

her get her son on the

14:53

throne. So who does it? She

14:58

doesn't marry Canoe, does she? She

15:00

does. What is happening? Oh

15:03

my goodness, this soap opera

15:05

is dramatic. Yeah, she

15:08

marries Canoe. He sounds very rugged. Is

15:12

this a marriage of, again, so I imagine

15:14

this is a marriage of convenience, but is

15:16

it also a marriage of anything more? It

15:18

doesn't start out that way. She

15:21

marries Canoe. And there's

15:23

two different accounts of that. The

15:25

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle just says very unceremoniously,

15:28

Canoe had her fetched to

15:31

be his bride. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Indeed.

15:33

Oh, please. I don't trust them.

15:37

But later, Emma has her own

15:39

account written about all that went

15:41

on. And she claims that Canoe

15:44

wooed her. But it's also

15:46

fun. Earlier, we were kind of squeamish

15:48

that Emma was so young when she

15:50

married the older Aethelred. Now the tables

15:53

are turned. Canoe is a teenager, and

15:55

she's in her 30s. What? She's

15:58

a cougar. presented

26:00

in that encomium that we've been talking

26:02

about, that account of Svein, Knut, and

26:04

Har the Knut, that she had

26:06

commissioned to protect her interests when it

26:08

all fell apart. And

26:10

we've been worrying that this has all

26:12

been about the men in Emma's life

26:14

and not about her. And

26:17

this was on her mind too, and she had something to

26:19

say about it. At the end

26:21

of the encomium, she's depicted as

26:23

co-ruling with Har the Knut and

26:25

Edward, not behind the scenes. And

26:28

indeed, if you look at the

26:30

illustration that comes at the beginning

26:32

of the encomium, it is

26:34

Emma sitting on the throne and Har the

26:36

Knut and Edward peeking out from behind a

26:38

curtain. But it gets better. The monk

26:41

who wrote the encomium was really

26:43

learned and his history is partly

26:45

based on Virgil's Aeneid. Emma can't

26:47

read Latin, but doesn't mean she

26:50

doesn't know the stories that are

26:52

in Latin texts. The encomium parallels

26:54

Knut to the mythical Aeneas who

26:56

sailed across the Mediterranean to found

26:58

Rome from the ruins of Troy

27:01

way back in the midst of time.

27:03

The encomium also compares Knut to Julius

27:05

Caesar, who conquered Gaul, made it to

27:08

Britain, defeated Antony and Cleopatra, but ended

27:10

up murdered by Brutus. But in all

27:12

of this, it's Emma who was the

27:14

survivor, and she's not left out of

27:17

this Aeneid business. The encomiest

27:19

compares her to Octavian, that

27:21

is Augustus, the first Roman

27:24

emperor, and the man Virgil

27:26

wrote for. While dead Knut and dying

27:28

Knut were all in the past, she

27:30

was the present and the future. And

27:33

all this is really interesting take. It's

27:35

Emma's take on what it meant to

27:37

be a wife and mother of kings.

27:40

And it definitely wasn't about being

27:42

the power behind the throne. The

27:44

encomiest wasn't bound by gender roles

27:47

in imagining her power. Emma is

27:49

mother and emperor. Fantastic.

27:51

Thank you, Elizabeth. I think it's interesting that

27:54

a woman of such influence has been forgotten. So

27:56

thank you for talking about her and bringing her

27:58

up. A

28:00

huge thank you to our guests in History Corner

28:02

from the University of York. We had the incredible

28:04

Professor Elizabeth Tyler. Thank you, Elizabeth. Oh, thank you

28:06

for having me. It was a blast. And in

28:08

Comedy Corner, we had the brilliant Jen Brister. Thank

28:11

you, Jen. Oh, Greg, thanks for having me. I've

28:13

really enjoyed it. And to you lovely listener, join

28:15

me next time as we fetch, or should that

28:17

be woo, another enticing historical topic. But for now,

28:19

I'm off to go and grow myself an awesome

28:21

fork beard. Bye. This

28:29

is a story about one of

28:31

Britain's most revered institutions and

28:35

the theft of ancient treasures that were sold around

28:37

the world. It felt like a real punch to

28:39

the stomach. My God, things are being stolen from

28:41

our museum. I'm Katie Rassell.

28:44

And from BBC Radio 4, this

28:46

is Thief at the British Museum. At

28:52

the heart of our tale is

28:54

an antiquities dealer turned amateur detective

28:56

thrown into the centre of a

28:58

global scandal. I was shocked.

29:00

I remember that thing that my hair stood on

29:02

in. Search

29:05

for Shadow World, Thief at the

29:07

British Museum, on BBC Sounds. Acorn

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TV is crime's new home, says

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Radio News. I'm not a good

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bird. An absolute must for hard-hitting

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stories, according to The New York

29:23

Times. You've got a funny kind

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of curiosity. From gritty mysteries... Guys

29:27

are crying. ...to sinister suspense. How?

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Acorn TV is bloody entertaining.

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Visit acorn.tv for a 30-day

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