They are remarkable, uh, objects.

Um, and, and the, the other thing is the density of, of, of castle building in this period is because, you know, when, when you're in England, um, England, as I've said repeatedly, is a kind of a precociously united, well-governed, uh, centralized state from the late 10th century onwards.

That's absolutely the opposite is true in Wales, and this is the key to understanding the difference between Wales and Scotland, is Scotland, although that there are, the outlying bits of it, uh, you know, beyond the core, are all sort of more or less independent.

So Moray in the north and, um, uh, you know, Galloway to the southwest, and Lothian to the south.

There's a, a kingdom at the core of Scotland that the Normans can do business with and negotiate with, if not as equals, then kind of like as country cousins, you know.

Whereas when they look at Wales, there is no polity that they consider worthy of buying into, so they're not gonna marry their daughters in the first instance to the King of Gwynedd or the King of Deheubarth or maybe the, you know, baron like Gerald of Windsor will.

But there's no sense of we can sort of, um, enter this polity and it will be a kind of a host for our ambitions.

Take us there.

The Carmen.

Yeah, the Carmen.

I'll probably call it that rather than the, the m- the longer-worded version.

So The Carmen, which is, um, written within a few months of the battle.

And then- A biography of William the Conqueror, which is written after the Carmen and using the Carmen and reacting to what's said in the Carmen by a chap called William of Poitiers, who is, is the most sycophantic biographer of William the Conqueror, but very, very well-informed.

So hugely biased, hugely well-informed.

There are our three main sources, Poitiers, the Carmen, the Bayeux Tapestry.

Very neat little calligraphy, too.

Did Harold promise William, make an oath to William sometime before that he would not do this?

This is the story of the Bayeux Tapestry.

This is where the tapestry comes into its own, and there are other written sources, but the tapestry is a, is a, is a kind of powerful outboard motor for this part of the story.

So a year or so i- in 1065, probably the summer before the rebellion in the North kicks off, which sets the Godwin family at loggerheads, Harold goes to see William, or goes to the continent and ends up in William's power.

And the problem here is that the sources at the time say different things, and people have been reinterpreting those sources for the past 900 odd years.

But for, so I'll just give you my reading of it.

I go with Eadmer of Canterbury, who's incredibly well-informed on this, lots of very convincing, um, specific detail in his account.

Um, uh-

Mark, in your book, you mention that you make a point to the fact that he's crowned very quickly, which is a little bit suspicious, isn't it?

Yes.

I think perhaps we should emphasise Harold is the most powerful man in England after the king himself, and some might say even more powerful than Edward the Confessor himself.

And the Godwinsons, of whom Harold is the head by this point, are also sort of upstarts, a bit like William the Conqueror.

They come from nowhere at the start of the 11th century to become the most powerful family in England, and they control almost all of the major earldoms, so Wessex, East Anglia, Northumbria, a couple of others as well, lesser ones.

So they are the dominant clan within England by 1066, so it seems very natural to them that they should take over the running of the show and have the crown once this elderly childless king shuffles off.

And of course the big fly in the ointment for them is William the Conqueror's claim to the throne.

would you like to tell us a little bit about his coronation?

So how did Harold die?

Well, how did ...

Okay, so the sh- the very short answer is we don't know, or we don't know for certain.

Th- then there's a much longer, more complicated answer, which I'll try and get as short as possible.

So it's well known that Harold died with an arrow in the eye because that's the way he's depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry.

But then once you start to unpick that, as people have been doing for at least 60, 70 years now, people say, "Well, is he? Is he the, actually the figure on the tapestry under the word Harold?" Which, uh, seems to show a figure with an arrow lodged in his eye, or is he another figure a few feet further along the tapestry who is being run down by a Norman on horseback? If you accept that he is the figure, likely to be the figure under the word Harold, that, then there's people who say, "Well, hang on, is that really an arrow in his eye?" Because if you look at the stitching or the holes on the back of the tapestry, it seems it might be, you know, a spear that has been reinterpreted as an arrow by 19th century restorers.

So you can lodge all these caveats for the Bayeux Tapestry's representation.

So speaking a little bit of the resistance and answering a- another question from George Edward Mannering, which excited a lot of responses I noticed on Facebook from people discussing this, uh, was William really the brutal tyrant that many interpretations make him out to be?