:00:10. > :00:25.Helen Castor is a media `` Midi veal `` medieval historian. Her latest
:00:26. > :00:34.work is Joan of Arc. She retells the story of the made in man's clothing
:00:35. > :00:37.who led the French to an lovable series of victories against English
:00:38. > :00:40.invaders until she was captured, tried and burnt at the stake by the
:00:41. > :00:59.English. Helen Castor, for those who have
:01:00. > :01:03.perhaps only the hideous notion of who Joan of Arc was what she did,
:01:04. > :01:06.with their remainders of the arc of her career.
:01:07. > :01:10.Joan of Arc was one of the most extraordinary figures in medieval
:01:11. > :01:15.history. Early France was experiencing an appalling period of
:01:16. > :01:22.crisis at war with England and also divided with itself in a civil war.
:01:23. > :01:26.In 1429, Joan of Arc appeared as if from nowhere, a peasant girl,
:01:27. > :01:31.probably about 17 years old, declaring that she had been sent by
:01:32. > :01:39.God to drive the English out of France and restorer the king to his
:01:40. > :01:45.throne. What she did, soft top. She let her cane, the leader of one half
:01:46. > :01:52.of the French, to the coronation. After that the wheels came off.
:01:53. > :01:58.Yes, she was captured, charged with heresy and burned.
:01:59. > :02:05.The historian today is fortunate because she is one of the few people
:02:06. > :02:10.in the middle ages about whom there is a considerable written record.
:02:11. > :02:15.The English tried her and took copious notes of all the trials and
:02:16. > :02:21.proceedings. And then the French staged a sort of anti`trial and
:02:22. > :02:26.recorded that. We have pages and pages of
:02:27. > :02:31.testimony, including from Joan herself.
:02:32. > :02:37.It is extraordinary. She went on to become an legendary figure in
:02:38. > :02:50.France. What we found was all romantic imagery is `` imagery. She
:02:51. > :02:54.is a national heroine but the real drama gets lost on that.
:02:55. > :02:59.The real Joan gets lost in that. It is extraordinary. Myth`making again
:03:00. > :03:04.almost as soon as she appeared and then gathered pace after she left.
:03:05. > :03:10.Every age has remade as Jordan and SMH for her own ends.
:03:11. > :03:15.She was a difficult and spiky character who had immense charisma.
:03:16. > :03:18.A tremendous impact on her contemporaries, including the King
:03:19. > :03:25.of France. But she is difficult for us to get a handle on because,
:03:26. > :03:29.absolutely central to her story is a religious visions which drove her
:03:30. > :03:34.own hands of the way society in which she was operating responded to
:03:35. > :03:37.that. The medieval approach to religion is something we have
:03:38. > :03:39.difficulty as modern people understanding.
:03:40. > :03:44.I think we do and sometimes it is seen as if Joan brought God into
:03:45. > :03:52.this war and that was one of her great powers. She said, I am
:03:53. > :03:55.bringing God's will to work here. One of the things we have to
:03:56. > :04:02.understand is that France was struggling with its sense of itself
:04:03. > :04:06.as God's chosen people, the great Christian kingdom, and yet it was
:04:07. > :04:12.riven with the vision and bore. How could these things be? So for John
:04:13. > :04:18.to bring a question from God that he might intervene in the world when
:04:19. > :04:21.all was lost was very powerful. One of the things that happened since I
:04:22. > :04:28.finished writing the book at the beginning of the year is that a
:04:29. > :04:31.resonance in watching the news that actually the power of unbending
:04:32. > :04:37.religious faith, uncompromising religious faith in warfare, is
:04:38. > :04:42.something that is beginning to see more directly real to us even here
:04:43. > :04:54.in our secular ways. I was going to ask, it is not too
:04:55. > :04:59.symbol to draw comparisons. Not at all. If someone lives in a
:05:00. > :05:08.world where God's hand intervenes and there is no room for
:05:09. > :05:14.compromise. Joan sees the truth of God on her side and the prosecutors
:05:15. > :05:19.say that he cannot be on her side because he is on the side. Something
:05:20. > :05:23.has got together and Joan has to die.
:05:24. > :05:32.Used to be an academic and `` academic. You switched. You are
:05:33. > :05:36.still a professional historian but you write books for a general
:05:37. > :05:41.audience. Why did you do that? I found I wanted to write books in a
:05:42. > :05:50.rather different way. I didn't want to abandon any of the regular, the
:05:51. > :05:52.discipline and the training that I got from academic life but I wanted
:05:53. > :05:55.to write narrative history. Another popular historian wrote
:05:56. > :06:01.recently that you have to make a choice between telling a really good
:06:02. > :06:11.tale but possibly finessing some of the complexities and being someone
:06:12. > :06:16.who sets out the clues by which they reached their conclusion. The first
:06:17. > :06:21.of that appeals to us but the latter is surely more honest to the
:06:22. > :06:25.difficulties of writing history. That is certainly true but what I am
:06:26. > :06:35.aiming for is to do both. There are extensive pages of notes were I am
:06:36. > :06:39.doing my Hercule Poirot that, showing the comparisons I have come
:06:40. > :06:43.to. I hope there is an honesty to the narrative part of the book
:06:44. > :06:48.because I as a historian have to make those decisions and decide
:06:49. > :06:51.which sources to follow, which accounts. Which balancing of
:06:52. > :07:02.evidence I find most convincing. Briefly, your last project was
:07:03. > :07:06.She`Wolves which was explicitly feminist. About women in the middle
:07:07. > :07:15.ages that tried to rule England as Queens. This is a book about another
:07:16. > :07:19.medieval women. To what extent it all is Joan of Arc a model for
:07:20. > :07:22.someone who modern feminists are to know about?
:07:23. > :07:27.I think it is someone that modern people ought to know about. Her role
:07:28. > :07:33.as a feminist icon is extraordinarily interesting. As in
:07:34. > :07:41.almost any other area of life, she is being used as a role model by
:07:42. > :07:52.both sides. Some will say she is a scourge of modern feminism. And yet
:07:53. > :07:58.suffragettes stressed like her. She is not unlike other figures like
:07:59. > :08:02.Elizabeth the first and Margaret Thatcher in that she didn't like
:08:03. > :08:10.other women around her. She is keen on being the exception rather than
:08:11. > :08:12.the start of a wave. But a woman who did the impossible is always worth
:08:13. > :08:22.looking at. Thank you very much.
:08:23. > :08:31.Still some rain to come. It would be totally dry. This weather front has
:08:32. > :08:36.introduced Lott a lot workload during the day. Temperatures have
:08:37. > :08:37.been in the low 20s when we