The Early Music Show - Edward III

Lucie Skeaping looks back on Edward III's 14th Century England with historian Ian Mortimer, focusing on the nation's life and musical culture. Edward III can be seen as a defining monarch in the history of the nation. After the disastrous reign of his father Edward II, he rebuilt the nation's confidence modelling his monarchy on the chivalric sensibilities of the legendary Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. The Hundred Years War began with Edward; he undertook a huge programme of castle building; and besides many other things, established the Order of the Garter. This was the age when the English language started to become the nation's lingua franca; it is the age of The Green Knight; Piers Plowman; and Geoffrey Chaucer. Lucie meets historian Ian Mortimer, an authority of the 14th century and Edward's biographer, to learn more about this period, and she reflects on the Englishness of the music of his age.