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Helen Castor on Medieval Power and Personalities
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About this episode
Helen Castor is a British historian and BBC broadcaster who left Cambridge because she wanted to write narrative history focused on individuals rather than the analytical style typical of academia. As someone interested in individual psychology and the functioning of power, Castor finds medieval England offers the perfect setting because its sophisticated power structures exist in "bare bones" without the "great apparatus of state," bringing individual power plays into sharper relief. Her latest book, The Eagle and the Hart , exemplifies this approach by examining Richard II and Henry IV as individuals whose personal choices became constitutional precedents that echo through English…