The Normans: everything you wanted to know

Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. Five years ago, while the UK was in coronavirus lockdown, we here at History Extra embarked on what we described as what might become a short, regular series, our Sunday Everything You Wanted to Know episodes. More than 200 instalments later, we've covered everything from the Assyrians to Alcatraz, offering insights from some of the world's leading experts. We wanted to bring you even more of this expertise, so, from next week, we're going to be starting a new series of multi-part explorations of some of history's most fascinating topics, including the gunpowder plot, the life and work of Jane Austen, and more. Check back next Sunday for that.

But for today's episode, we thought we'd mark the end of this chapter by revisiting the very first Everything You Wanted to Know episode, featuring Mark Morris discussing the Normans with Dave Musgrove. First question, and this comes from my friend G. Ougle. Who won the Battle of Hastings and why? Oh, this is an easy one because we're still fairly confident about the answer.

That the winner of the Battle of Hastings we're still reasonably satisfied was William, Duke William of Normandy, later known as the conqueror. Why? I mean, the contemporary answer would have been because God favoured him. You know, when you went to battle in the Middle Ages, you're putting your dispute to the judgment of God.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (45 minutes, 8,764 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 5 episodes for $3.49, and monthly plans are cheaper still.