Peter Frankopan

Uh, and I got to see the Bayeux Tapestry at a press briefing, and it is everything that it's cracked up to be, so you must go and see it.

But what we decided to do on Empire was not to just dwell on the story in the tapestry and the Norman Conquest of Britain, but to open it up, uh, as this is a global history podcast, to all the Norman conquests, which means telling the story after Hastings of the Norman Conquest of South Italy and the extraordinary Norman kingdom, uh, of Sicily, and we're gonna be getting the great Peter Frankopan on, uh, to tell us about that.

And then beyond to the Crusades and the Norman contribution to the Crusader states, which was the great principality of Antioch, a very, very long way from the Norman heartlands in France.

But to open the series, we're gonna go back in time before William the Conqueror to the settlement of the Normans in Normandy, and the whole story of how far the Normans were or were not the Vikings who landed in Normandy in the ninth and tenth centuries.

Anyway, I would strongly advise to anyone that is listening to this on a podcast to just turn on YouTube and have a look at Eleanor's hair, because it's gonna be one of the most, uh, memorable things of the whole podcast.

[laughs]

[laughs] If Peter Frankopan doesn't have hair like this, I will be very disappointed.

I'm having all your guests to bright pink.

As the unpopular war in Iran drags on and prices spike as a result, will the American voters punish Donald Trump? To reflect on the path to Trumpism and America's future, today's episode is a roundup of all the highlights from our recent tour with Anthony Scaramucci.

Scaramucci toured seven cities around the UK to discuss his new book, All The Wrong Moves, speaking to hosts including Matt Forde, Anne McElvoy, Katie Razzall, Tina Brown, Justin Webb, Peter Frankopan, and Marina Hyde.

Let's hear some of the highlights now.

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But I suppose it reinforces how the game evolved.

Hotten reports that there was a single wicket match that the authors played at Broad Halfpenny Down when they were first starting up the club, and Peter Frankopan, who very kindly did the translation on the Final Word logo, and, uh, of course, a Oxford don among myriad other things, uh, author of the, is it the most-read nonfiction book this century? Um, or near enough to it with Silk Roads.

He won the single wicket day the authors did back then to replicate, uh, that, that time from the mid-19th century.

Now, a couple of years before that in 1845, I said he was an author.

Hello and welcome to a new episode of Legacy.

I'm Peter Frankopan.

I'm Afua Hirsch.

And this is Legacy, the show that explores the lives, events and ideas that have shaped our world and asks whether they have the reputations that they truly deserve.

Doucet also discusses her Women's Prize-winning book, The Finest Hotel in Kabul, which tells the story of modern Afghanistan through the Intercontinental Hotel and the people who kept it running through invasion, civil war, and the return of the Taliban.

Let's join our host, historian and author Peter Frankopan, live at Union Chapel.

[audience applauding] Uh, thank you, Mia.

Thank you, Intelligence Squared.

I- don't be humble.

[laughs]

You all have PhDs 'cause you've been reading Peter Frankopan's books.

[laughs]

Doucette also discusses her women's prize-winning book, The Finest Hotel in Kabul, which tells the story of modern Afghanistan through the Intercontinental Hotel, and the people who kept it running through invasion, civil war, and the return of the Taliban.

Let's join our host, historian and author Peter Frankopan, live at Union Chapel.

Thank you, Mia.

Thank you, Intelligence Squared.

I know it.

Don't be humble.

You all have PhDs, because you've been reading Peter Frankopan's books.

And I had this feeling and thinking, oh my god, my first literally hours in Afghanistan, am I going to stay six days? Am I going to stay six weeks? Will the BBC take me out? Will I run out? And I ended up staying nearly a year.

And for everything else, including our Substacks and updates on TikTok and Instagram, just check out the show notes or search Legacy podcast.

I'm Peter Frankopan.

I'm Afua Hirsch, and we'll see you on the next episode of Legacy.

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We begin in sub-Saharan Africa.

There's a really interesting study that actually inspired me for this episode from Peter Frankopan.

He's an environmental historian, wrote a fantastic couple of books about environmental history.

So thank you, Peter.

But...

We like to think of climate as very binary a lot of the time.

Let's start early humans.

Again, this study reconstructed around 74,000 years of human settlement.