There’s a dirty secret to history podcasts, and it only becomes clear when you actually start one.
The truth is that many people will SAY that they want to learn something new, and hear new stories and hear new facts. But every time, without fail, the most popular episodes - and the most popular history shows - are about stories and figures that people already know.
Now, this isn’t because the people who say they want to hear something new are lying. It’s just because they’ve forgotten what else they are looking for - they want to know more about stories that are important.
Which is reasonable. But the problem is that this creates a self-defeating loop, because we often judge whether someone or something is important based upon whether or not we have heard about it before. If you have already heard about something, there’s a good chance you’re going to assume it was significant. Similarly, if you haven’t heard about something, you very well may assume that it’s unimportant.
This is why people have an unquenchable appetite for material about figures like Caesar or Henry VIII, but start to get a bit antsy if you spend more than a handful of episodes on rulers with unfamiliar names like Penda or Offa.
What’s at play here is a cognitive bias. People who go out wanting to learn something new suddenly find themselves asking “If this part of history was important, then wouldn’t we have already heard about it?
This is why the History section of any book store tends to have whole shelves dedicated to individual marquee monarchs. William, Henry VIII, Elizabeth… whole forests have been destroyed in the production of books about their exploits, and part of that is because (as they are already known figures) selling books about them is easy. People are already predisposed to want to know about them, and to assume their importance. They have good press.
Even King Richard the Lionheart, who barely even visited Britain during his reign, has a pretty good ranking in the modern imagination… possibly because he looks kick ass as a disney lion.
Similarly, if you knew anything about this period in history before listening to my show you probably knew about Alfred the Great…. and for good reason, the story of Alfred is an exciting one, and he was a significant figure in history.
But because he was a known quantity before we even got to him, that helped burnish his reputation before you ever learned about his campaign on AEthelney and it signalled to you “hey, this is someone important to pay attention to.”
But that assumption can be dangerous, since it can lead you to discount lesser known figures. Furthermore, it might lead you to assume that if you’ve already heard about something… then it must have been just as important and popular in the past as it is now. Which isn’t always true.
For example, you probably assumed that in the Middle Ages Alfred was seen as the greatest of the Anglo Saxon leaders. Or at least the greatest of the House of Wessex.
After all, it was in the name.
But as we dig into the record we find something interesting.
And I’m talking about one record in particular, the Gesta Regum Anglorum written by William of Malmesbury.
William was writing about 225 years after Alfred’s death, which means that his account of the Anglo Saxons was from a post-Norman Conquest perspective. . Furthermore, he modelled his writing on the style of Bede, which means that he drew his account, not just from previous written records, but also from accounts circulating among the people of 12th century England.
What this means, and why his writing is so important to historians today, is that William is giving us an invaluable look into how the House of Wessex was viewed by people livi...
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