A new take on the battle of Hastings

Historians have got the Battle of Hastings all wrong, shouted Britain's newspapers recently. That was because Professor Tom Licence has proposed an interesting new theory on the subject. David Musgrove caught up with Professor Licence to find out more. Today I am joined by Professor Tom Lysence, who is Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia and the author of an upcoming biography of King Harald, which is coming out with Yale University Press in August. And Tom, you've been in the news a lot recently because you proposed a slightly different take on the run-up.

to the Battle of Hastings, 14 October 1066, which is of course the crunch moment of the Norman conquest when Duke William of Normandy defeated the English King Harold and took his throne. And of course the the story is topical right now because we're all excited about the Bear Tapestry coming to the UK in September and the Bear Tapestry tells that story as well. So unsurprisingly this attracted a lot of press interest. So let's get straight into it. What is your new analysis of what happened in advance of the Battle of Hastings?

Absolutely. So my new analysis focuses on, I think, two very established misreadings of the sources. The first is the idea that Harold disbanded his fleet from London in September and therefore had no fleet left to face Harold Hardrada or William the Conqueror later that campaigning season. And the second piece of, I think, misunderstanding is this idea of the forced march or forced ride.

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