A Ploughman's 'Uprising' (with Dan Jones)

In the new film Uprising, a ploughman played by Andrew Garfield joins in the 1381 Peasants' Revolt against Richard II of England. Historian Dan Jones served as the medieval consultant on the film, and joins us to discuss the movie, and his upcoming book, CASTLES. Support Noble Blood: —ORDER 'THE ARCANE ARTS' https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/771398/the-arcane-arts-by-s-d-coverly/ — Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/noblebloodtales — Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250840578/anatomyalovestory' and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250861016/immortalityalovestory' See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dana Schwartz?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. If you know Connor Tomlinson from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum, you know he's one of the most delightful people on television. He's also a serious history nerd. He has a new fun history podcast called What the Fact, co-hosted with Carter Roy from Conspiracy Theories and Murder: True Crime Stories. Every week, they take three unbelievable true facts from across history and tell you the story behind them. Carter sets the scene, and Connor brings the deep cuts, the hilarious tangents, and his infectious love of history.

• 0:42Dana Schwartz?

  From the worst years to be alive, to the women so powerful they started wars, Connor and Carter will take you all over the timeline. Every episode will leave you in a better mood and a little smarter. The wildest stuff is real, and the real stuff is way wilder than you think. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact on your favorite podcast app, or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

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• 2:58Dana Schwartz?

  Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Listener discretion advised.

• 3:10Dana Schwartz?

  I am thrilled to be joined today by one of my all-time favorite historians, Dan Jones, acclaimed historian, TV presenter, bestselling author. His newest book, Castles: A Fortified History of the World, is coming out, I believe, in the US November 2, 2026. And he's also found time to serve as the medieval consultant on the newest Paul Greengrass film, The Uprising, which will be out September 10. Dan, thank you so much for joining me.

• 3:41Speaker 03

  Well, thank you for all those accolades. To be one of your favorites is truly a life goal. So, thank you, Dana. It's nice to talk to you again.

• 3:48Dana Schwartz?

  Am I missing any massive accomplishments?

• 3:51Speaker 03

  God, there are just so many, aren't there? No, I think that'll do for now.

• 3:55Dana Schwartz?

  Have you been knighted yet?

• 3:56Speaker 03

  Do you know what? I haven't been knighted, but my wife has been inducted into the Order of Merit. She's just been awarded by the King of England, the MBE. So, she's a member of the Order of the British Empire. But she's a do-gooder. She started a charity 10 years ago, and they recognize that sort of thing in the UK with far more readiness than they do enormous sales of historical books and accomplishments and films. So, good for her. She's carrying that load for us, yeah.

• 4:25Dana Schwartz?

  So, I want to talk especially about the movie Uprising, which tells a fictionalized version of the peasant revolt of 1381. But forgive me if I'm wrong. I don't recall the peasant revolt of 1381 ever being put to film, despite it being a massive historical event in the history of England.

• 4:44Speaker 03

  I have not seen another film about the peasants revolt of 1381, and that's not for want of desire. You know, 20 years ago, I wrote a book called Summer of Blood. It was the first historical book that I wrote about this incredibly dramatic event with these extraordinary cinematic set pieces that really happened, you know, from the end of the 14th century, in the aftermath of the Black Death.

• 5:09Dana Schwartz?

  Yeah.

• 5:09Speaker 03

  And thought, as I was writing it, I mean, this, it's a wild and sprawling story in the historical sources, but it has these extraordinary moments of drama. And the great Paul Greengrass, you know, director of Bourne films, and, you know, most recently The Lost Bus, and so many other amazing movies, Captain Phillips, has now turned his hands to dramatizing it. I mean, you've seen the movie. You know what it's like.

• 5:32Dana Schwartz?

  We did see it together. I didn't want to get the listeners jealous. They're already jealous enough that I get to talk to you.

• 5:37Speaker 03

  Okay, listeners, don't be envious, but Dana came to watch the screening of the film. You know what it's like. It's an epic.

• 5:45Dana Schwartz?

  It's extraordinary. It's an epic, and shockingly relevant, the themes of peasants, the common people, understanding that they've been abused by the wealthy, who don't actually acknowledge them as people, and rising up together. I think they're very universal themes and moments. But I want to start at the beginning for listeners who maybe aren't familiar with the peasants revolt specifically. It takes place under Richard II. For audiences who maybe know Richard I, the Lionheart, you know, we know Richard III, Shakespeare's Hunchback, but who was Richard II in the middle?

• 6:21Speaker 03

  Well, like many trilogies, the best one is the second. I mean, you know, The Empire Strikes Back: Godfather Part II. So, we're in the end of the 14th century.

• 6:30Dana Schwartz?

  Yep.

• 6:30Speaker 03

  The Black Death has happened, 1347, 8, 9.

• 6:33Dana Schwartz?

  Not a happy time to be an Englishman.

• 6:36Speaker 03

  Well, no, no, you're either alive or dead, and neither was perfect. So, the calamitous 14th century, as Barbara Tuchman called it, is drawing towards its end. The country's been hammered by the Black Death. There's an ongoing conflict, the Hundred Years' War, which has been draining public finances. The golden age of chivalry under, you know, the rebirth of chivalry under Edward III, the Black Prince, is now receding into the realm of memory, because Edward III is dead, having died kind of decrepit senile, long past his sell-by date. The Black Prince, supposedly his successor, has now died also, and they've left as king a boy, Richard II, who's 10 years old when he becomes king

• 7:15Speaker 03

  in 1377. And four years later, policies enacted in his name by his sort of cohort of nobles, bishops, and officials, merchants, have pushed the burden of economic distress caused by the war further and further down the social scale, until it's resting heavily on ordinary people, peasants, which is a large class, but, you know, ordinary villagers. At the same time, they've also passed a raft of laws, which have prevented those ordinary people from reaping the benefits of living past the Black Death, which should have been higher wages, better conditions, freedom from serfdom. These have all been legally

• 7:56Speaker 03

  restricted. And what you end up with is a tinderbox. So, in the summer of 1381, there are rising movements, particularly in southeast England, Essex, Kent, the counties around London, where the ordinary people have had enough. And as we see brilliantly in Paul's movie, Andrew Garfield, playing a fictionalized character called the Ploughman, he snaps and he says, "Enough. You've taken enough from us." And that really captures, I think, the spirit of disquiet and rage that was rising among ordinary people in England at this time.

• 8:32Dana Schwartz?

  There's a moment early on in the film that I found very striking at this period, as you said, restricting what should have been the advances after the Black Death with fewer workers. You know, the workers should have more bargaining power, but instead they enact higher taxes. And there's a scene early in the film where there's a poll tax for every adult, and they are physically checking women to see if they are of age. Is that something that actually occurred?

• 8:58Speaker 03

  Yes. As accounts of the beginning of the rebellion had it, that was one of the deplorable techniques, moves, abuses that were pulled by tax collectors going out to assess a poll tax. So the taxation that was leveled on ordinary people was known as a poll tax. There were three different versions of it, but essentially, rather than landholders being taxed for a percentage of the value of their lands, ordinary people were taxed at a fixed rate per head. So it's a regressive tax, and the tax was levied

• 9:36Speaker 03

  on adults. So tax collectors had a duty, but also an interest in proving that people were adult, were of age, and in the case of young girls, were past the age of puberty. And so we have these stories from the chronicles leading up to the rebellion of tax collectors going in and physically manhandling girls to check that. And that sort of event in the sources is something I think that, as you saw in the movie, it speaks volumes on screen. It's very hard in a movie to explain the intricacies of medieval tax policy. And Paul is a great filmmaker and has more sense than to try and do that, you know, through

• 10:18Speaker 03

  exposition. But, you know, you see tax collectors going into a village and sticking their hands up girls' skirts. You know, immediately, this is a system in which everything is going very badly wrong.

• 10:27Dana Schwartz?

  It's gone too far. The thing about a system of serfdom is I think people sometimes hear that, and it doesn't really sound quite as bad as it is. But what did it actually entail to sort of be fixed to land as a worker?

• 10:42Speaker 03

  From the time of the Norman conquest and earlier, this institution of serfdom had existed. It's not very far from slavery. So if you're a serf, if you're an unfree peasant, you are more or less bound to the land. There will be a lord who owns the land, and you, the worker, will be allowed to live on that land in exchange for doing a certain amount of days' labor service every year to your lord, to paying certain taxes, usually in kind of animals or crops. There's a whole bunch of occasions and reasons why you would be asked to do that. You would give the bulk of your labor to enriching the person and

• 11:24Speaker 03

  the social system above you. And critically, you're not free to leave their land. You are bound to the land, and so are your children. It's in perpetuity through the family. It's possible to obtain freedom, but it's very difficult. One of the other conditions of serfdom would be that you were denied access to the royal courts, to systems of lawmaking, to legal freedoms that would be available to free people. These were denied to serfs. Now, what happens after the Black Death is that serfdom, which had been gradually withering before the Black Death, and as the economy of England had become more sophisticated, peasants were being released from the conditions of serfdom and allowed to pay rents. And,

• 12:06Speaker 03

  you know, there was more of a cash economy. In the aftermath of the Black Death, in order that landlords should free themselves from the rising costs in a cash economy of a halving of the workforce, i.e. much higher rates for labor and collapsing rents, disaster for a landlord, they were trying to reimpose serfdom. And they were doing that by pulling out bits of paper, let's call it paper, parchment, old documents, going back to the doomsday book that said, hang on, your great, great, great, great grandfather was a serf at the time of William the Conqueror. That's hereditary. Get back on the land and work my land for free. Now, the reimposition of serfdom understandably irked a lot of people and went alongside

• 12:50Speaker 03

  things like regressive poll taxes. You end up with a situation, and this is probably somewhat analogous or feel somewhat analogous to the world today. You end up with a situation where the mass of ordinary people feel like the whole system is rigged against them. And that there's a wealthy elite at the top who control everything, who control the tax system, who control politics, who control the law, who control the direction of travel, who control the conversation of the country. The whole thing is loaded to an elite who are actively out to do down and oppress the ordinary people. That's the feeling that's building in 1370s and the years that lead up to the Peasants' Revolt.

• 13:30Dana Schwartz?

  So we understand sort of the tender. What actually happens when these groups of people begin fighting back? What actually happens in the 1381 Peasants' Rebellion?

• 13:40Speaker 03

  Well, it begins in the late spring to early summer of 1381, and tax collectors go out into the shires of England to investigate tax evasion of the most recent poll tax. And they try, as we've discussed, and as Paul brilliantly shows in the movie, they use pretty heavy-handed tactics. And finally, they push the ordinary people too far. And there are, in a number of villages across Essex and Kent in particular, there is spontaneous but somewhat organized resistance. So villagers snap, they refuse to pay the tax. And then

• 14:22Speaker 03

  there's an organization, there's a coordination of villages around that area where this village says, we're not paying, the next village says, we're not paying. And suddenly, there's this ground swell of anti-government, anti-tax, anti-oligarch feeling. And the movement starts to build. And through networks of, particularly of traveling priests in the mold of, and most famously led by John Ball, who's brilliantly played by Jamie Bell in the movie, this coordination. There are a lot of military veterans, such as Wat Tyler, maybe the most famous name from the Peasants' Revolt, who've had lots of military experience fighting in the King's Wars in France and Scotland, who take up military leadership. And by the

• 15:05Speaker 03

  time you get to late May into early June of 1381, there are, if we believe the chroniclers, tens of thousands, maybe as many as 100,000, that's probably a high estimate, but there is tens of thousands of people marching towards England's capital, London. They basically follow the river Thames upriver, which takes you on the south side of it to a place called Blackheath, a large open space where the rebels camp. And by this stage, they're in communication with sympathetic Londoners who will, who control access to the city via the bridge and its gates, and also with the royal court of the boy king, Richard II. And what the rebels want, and Paul shows this in the film, more than anything else,

• 15:48Speaker 03

  is to talk to the king. Because this is a boy king, a teenager, he's 14 years old. And the whole country has been encouraged since the start of his reign to invest their hopes in this sort of-

• 15:57Dana Schwartz?

  Messianic figure.

• 15:59Speaker 03

  Messianic figure. That's exactly right, Dana. And they want to meet with the king. And they believe with a touching, but in some senses harrowing, it's not a peasant pun, harrowing naivety, that if they can just talk to the king, he will understand that he's been led astray by corrupt officials, and he will restore justice where the law has failed. And so that's the setup we have. And by the time we get to Corpus Christi weekend, a sort of a big festival weekend in London in the second week of June 1381.

• 16:38Dana Schwartz?

  If you know Connor Tomlinson from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum, you know he's one of the most delightful people on television. He's also a serious history nerd. He has a new fun history podcast called What the Fact?, co-hosted with Carter Roy from Conspiracy Theories and Murder: True Crime Stories. Every week, they take three unbelievable true facts from across history and tell you the story behind them. Carter sets the scene, and Connor brings the deep cuts, the hilarious tangents, and his infectious love of history. From the worst years to be alive to the women so powerful they started wars, Connor and

• 17:22Dana Schwartz?

  Carter will take you all over the timeline. Every episode will leave you in a better mood and a little smarter. The wildest stuff is real, and the real stuff is way wilder than you think. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact? on your favorite podcast app, or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 17:46Dana Schwartz?

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• 19:43Speaker 04

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• 21:03Dana Schwartz?

  What I always found fascinating about the Peasants' Revolt, and I think kind of the main thing I understood about it, was that they breached the Tower of London, which to my mind was unbreachable. How does that happen?

• 21:16Speaker 03

  That's a great historical question, which, again, I think Paul answers definitively and convincingly, and in accordance with the historical sources in the movie. So the rebels gain access to London because there are sympathetic Londoners who allow them across London Bridge, which was controlled by gates and a drawbridge. That's opened, the rebels get into London. When that happens, Richard II, the boy king's advisers, suggests that he does meet the rebels, which he does just outside the city walls to the east in a place called Myerend.

• 21:46Dana Schwartz?

  Seems like the least he could do.

• 21:48Speaker 03

  You've got to do something, right? You've got to do something. And they have this moment, again, depicted brilliantly in the film, where there's a question asked, do we use the king as bait? To what extent is the king actually interested in meeting these people? He's a boy. He can hear them chanting his name, as it were, from within the Tower of London, the most secure fortress in London, but in the southeast corner of the city. So they send the king out to meet rebels at Myerend. And the rebels present him with a petition that says we'd like, you know, there's a whole range of demands, but they want charters of freedom, charters of manumission, charters that guarantee that they're not going to be reduced to the condition of serfs anymore, what rents is going to

• 22:30Speaker 03

  be on their land. And there's a moment at Myerend where the rebels, led by, in the movie, by John Bull, say, we want permission to go hunt the traitors, the people around the king who have been responsible for all of these terribly damaging policies. And Richard critically says, okay, you can. Now, at that point, the rebels return to London with this message. The king has said we can hunt traitors and somehow gain access to the Tower of London. Now, the Tower of London, then as now, is not easy to storm. So I think it's almost certain that sympathizers within the tower let the rebels in. And it feels

• 23:14Speaker 03

  like, you know, this is a revolution. The spirit of revolution is absolutely upon the country. And it feels in that moment, this is it. The thing is actually happening. So with someone within the Tower of London, we don't know who, opens the gates, I think. And I know this is the way that's depicted in the movie. And once the rebels get into the tower, all hell breaks loose, and they lay hands on the Archbishop of Canterbury, who's also the Lord Chancellor, effectively the Prime Minister of the day, Simon Sudbury. Sidebar, within the movie, there are some heads lopped off. And I think Paul really captures the spiraling bloody violence of the time. Sidebar, anyone who goes to see the movie and wonders what happens to the Archbishop of Canterbury's head. Well, in

• 23:57Speaker 03

  Sudbury, which is a village in North Essex, it's in the church. And if you ring up the verger of the church in Sudbury and say, hey, can I come see Simon Sudbury's head? You can see the head that was chopped off in June 1381. They keep it in the little box. I've seen it.

• 24:13Dana Schwartz?

  They keep the head in the box? What has kept it? What is, how is it preserved? What is happening with this head?

• 24:19Speaker 03

  It's without question a head.

• 24:21Dana Schwartz?

  Okay.

• 24:22Speaker 03

  As I recall, it's, I mean, God, it was when I was writing the books. It's nearly 20 years ago since I last went to see the head, and I haven't revisited. I'm overdue a visit back.

• 24:29Dana Schwartz?

  You have to pay your respects.

• 24:31Speaker 03

  It's a medieval skull. I think it's got scraps of skin left on it, but don't take my word for it. If you Google this, you can see it. And there was some work done in the last decade or so on the skull.

• 24:43Dana Schwartz?

  I think you knew that when I was gripping your shoulder during the bloody bits, I'm not going to Google this skull.

• 24:50Speaker 03

  Let me just very briefly tell you, there was some work done 10 or so years ago, where, you know, when they scanned the skull, they did it with Richard III, and then rebuild what Simon Sudbury would have looked like. There's a non-severed version of Sudbury's head, which was reconstructed by academics working on from the skull.

• 25:05Dana Schwartz?

  Fascinating. So the king possibly gives the rebels permission to breach the tower, to take revenge on the traitors. But ultimately, and not to spoil history, these peasants don't get everything they want. This rebellion, like so many medieval peasant rebellions, is ultimately put down. And how does that go?

• 25:26Speaker 03

  Yes. So there's a whole sort of orgy of violence that spirals out after Richard's allowed the rebels to hunt traitors. Subsequent to that, there's another meeting set up at Smithfield, in which Richard will once again go and meet the rebels, and they're going to present him with even more demands. This time, an extremely radical set that says we're going to do away with all lords, all bishops. There's just going to be the commons, the true commons, and the king. And that's going to be it. But this time, the grownups around the king, led by the mayor of London, an extremely wealthy oligarch called William Walworth, dastardly character, as portrayed in the uprising in the movie, they got a plan, and it's an ambush. And the rebels are led out to see their king. They sort

• 26:09Speaker 03

  of fall to the knees in wonder. And I suspect they're also extremely hungover and exhausted when they see him. But then they're ambushed by troops, and they're led away from London. In the weeks and months that follow, there's a violent and bloody crackdown on the rebellion. Now, in Paul's movie, this is compressed into the actions that follow from Smithfield onwards. I mean, and it's very well done. He gets the spirit of the ambush, the betrayal of the rebellion by the king, who has flipped from saying, yes, you can hunt traitors, to, yes, we're going to string you all up. I hesitate to say the death of the dream, but the rebellion is squashed. But what's interesting about the Peasants' Revolt is

• 26:50Speaker 03

  that the genie is out of the box, as it were, the bottle. Genies don't live in boxes, do they? They live in bottles.

• 26:56Dana Schwartz?

  Heads live in boxes, Dan.

• 26:58Speaker 03

  Heads live in boxes, genies live in bottles. They've both come out. The spirit of the ordinary people having a stake and a say in politics, or at least being a consideration in politics, has entered discourse now. The poet John Gower says, writing around this time, there are three things that you have to beware of, because when they get out of control, you're in big, big trouble. The first is a raging fire. The second is a flood of water. And the third is the common people, because, you know, once provoked, they can't be stopped by reason or discipline. So it now becomes a sort of heuristic of medieval politics, that if you push the ordinary people too far, you are in big trouble. And we see it, and we see it.

• 27:42Dana Schwartz?

  I mean, throughout the Hundred Years' War, there's going to be opportunities. I'm sure that kings would want to raise taxes.

• 27:48Speaker 03

  Right. But it has now been definitively proven that if you've got to beware levying a poll tax. I mean, sure, I remember growing up in the UK, certainly in the 80s and early 90s, Margaret Thatcher levied a poll tax, and the same thing happened. There were riots in London. She had to roll back the policy. So it's become axiomatic in British politics since 1381. Do not levy poll taxes on the ordinary people. But I think beyond that, and this is another thing that the uprising shows, you know, without, I think, too much of a spoiler, as well as politically, there's a cultural survival of this idea that exists through the genre of outlaw ballads, outlaw literature, that rises at exactly the same time as the Peasants' Revolt. And that's stories, there's one called Gamalyn, one

• 28:31Speaker 03

  called Adam Bell, one called Climb of the Clough. But the most famous is Robin Hood. And the medieval Robin Hood who emerges in the late 14th century, just as the Peasants' Revolt is happening, is a character who could have stepped from Tyler's army, you know, who could easily have walked shoulder to shoulder with Andrew Garfield as ploughman. He's a violent yeoman who has been pushed to the edge of society and the end of his tether by the unjust royal officials. And so there's no coincidence, these two things rise out of the post-Black Death world, I think.

• 29:08Dana Schwartz?

  It's very well said. So even though the uprising itself might not have had a happy ending, its impact could be felt literally for centuries throughout English politics.

• 29:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's true. And I think that like the best historical stories, it has something to say to us in the world today as well. And although we're 700 years removed and, you know, sitting here on the West Coast of the United States, 6,000 miles removed from, from these little villages of Essex and Kent, this idea that ordinary people pushed to the limit will take matters into their own hands and will unite under the banner of justice and a better world, that has been a part of the Western tradition for the last 700 years. And this phrase, to return to Barbra Streisand, this distant mirror for

• 30:00Speaker 03

  us to reflect on our own times. And I think Paul is such a brilliant filmmaker. The movie that he's made is not polemic and it's not dogmatic. It's an exciting, two hours, edge of your seat, historical epic, but fundamentally, it's entertaining. It's drawn out of history. I hope that people who go and watch this movie will not only convert to, to being fans of medieval history, will also just have that opportunity to reflect on, on our own times, wherever they sit on the political spectrum. And I think that the, one of the great things he's done with this movie is to invite people to reflect without telling them what to think. And that is the mark of a, a really sophisticated and brilliant storyteller.

• 30:42Dana Schwartz?

  Incredibly well said. Richard II, I find a very interesting figure. At the end of his life, he's going to be framed as a tyrant when he's, spoiler alert, later in his life, overthrown by the future Henry IV. But where do you rank Richard II among medieval monarchs?

• 31:01Speaker 03

  The worst and the best. And the worst in the sense that he was the one who most comprehensively, and I think knowingly and willingly, subverted everything that was, that one was supposed to do as king. You know, where kings were supposed to be militaristic, he was pacifistic. Where they're supposed to be fair minded, he was violently partisan. Where they're supposed to be public spirited, he was private minded and had a sort of private army. He was a tyrant. He was a lunatic. He was the product of inbreeding. He was a great example of, of everything you shouldn't do in making and then maintaining a king. And he lost the crown and ultimately began the Wars of the Roses. He was self pitying. You know, Shakespeare gets him bang to rights, bang to rights in the, the Richard II play.

• 31:46Speaker 03

  He has Richard sort of flounce and throw himself to the ground and say, for God's sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings, how some have been deposed, some slain in war, some haunted by the ghost they have deposed, some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed, all murdered.

• 32:01Dana Schwartz?

  And he's doing this off the cuff, for the record. He's not reading his big Shakespearean tome while he quotes this, just so the listeners know.

• 32:08Speaker 03

  I've probably slightly got some of that wrong. But, you know, he says, but within the hollow crown that bounds the mortal temples of a king keeps death his court. You know, he blames the crown. He blames the country. He's always blaming somebody else. He's the sort of, he's not only a tyrant, but a pathetic figure.

• 32:24Dana Schwartz?

  That's the worst.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  That's the worst. The reason I think he's the best is because aren't, aren't we just captivated by the nutters? Like, it's so exciting. It's so dramatic. It's, he's so extra. He does all this in the fanciest costumes.

• 32:39Dana Schwartz?

  And he was a child for so much of this.

• 32:42Speaker 03

  Gosh, you are such a mother, aren't you? Um, he, yes, he's-

• 32:45Dana Schwartz?

  He was a child. He was 10.

• 32:47Speaker 03

  It's a great example of what, how not to raise a child.

• 32:51Dana Schwartz?

  Yes, this is a good reminder. I do have a son.

• 32:53Speaker 03

  You have a son. Do not let him believe he is the Messiah, Dana, because I'm telling you, he'll grow up to be a tyrant.

• 33:01Dana Schwartz?

  Well, he's a toddler, so I am working on that.

• 33:03Speaker 03

  You've got to start early.

• 33:05Dana Schwartz?

  Yeah.

• 33:05Speaker 03

  You've got to, you've got to impose the lessons, I'm telling you, but as a historian and as a parent.

• 33:11Dana Schwartz?

  Thank you. Now, before I let you go, I want to talk very briefly about castles. Why did you choose to make the focus of your book castles?

• 33:19Speaker 03

  It connects to the peasants revolt, right? What's the greatest historical site in London? It's the Tower of London.

• 33:25Dana Schwartz?

  The near impregnable Tower of London.

• 33:28Speaker 03

  Nearly impregnable. And look, castles are these iconic buildings from the Middle Ages, but they have this big history that takes us all the way back to the Bronze Age, to Troy, you know, the emergence of castles in Bronze Age citadels, and come all the way forward to the US Civil War, you know, the third system fortresses, which, which were sort of blown to bits with the arrival of rifle cannon, and then to nuclear bunkers. So looking at castles gives me the opportunity to do something I love, which is to tell big stories on a grand scale, huge narratives, sweeping kind of world history. But it also a kind of emotional touch point with them, I believe, which is why have people built these monumental fortresses over the years? To protect things that they love. And what

• 34:10Speaker 03

  those things have been has changed. And what, what the, the function of the castle is has changed. It used to be militaristic, but now if you think, I mean Disneyland, it's the, it's the dream guardian of the great American project and, and the American dream. So castles is a sort of pass to go wandering through the greatest, greatest eras of human history.

• 34:32Dana Schwartz?

  Have you been to Disneyland yet?

• 34:34Speaker 03

  Okay, here's, here's a lesson-

• 34:36Dana Schwartz?

  Have you ever been to Disneyland?

• 34:38Speaker 03

  No, Dana, I've never been to Disneyland. And actually, like, really shamefully, and I do regret this, I always refuse to take my kids because I just, I can't. Don't be that. Do take your son to Disneyland.

• 34:50Dana Schwartz?

  I'm just saying, you're writing about castles. You're in Los Angeles.

• 34:54Speaker 03

  I should go, shouldn't I?

• 34:55Dana Schwartz?

  If you're gonna go see Sudbury's head, you should at least go see a castle.

• 35:00Speaker 03

  Do you want to make a deal?

• 35:01Dana Schwartz?

  Yeah. What's the deal?

• 35:03Speaker 03

  I'll go to Disneyland if you go see Archbishop Simon Sudbury's head from the peasants revolt.

• 35:08Dana Schwartz?

  Well, I'm going to York in the, in the spring, so that will absolutely happen.

• 35:12Speaker 03

  We're gonna do this. Fine. Okay.

• 35:14Dana Schwartz?

  We're gonna do it. It's a deal.

• 35:15Speaker 03

  I'll be back, I'll be back in the US in, in November. So, uh, this, this is all gonna work out nicely.

• 35:21Dana Schwartz?

  Dan, thank you so much for joining me. I won't take up. I know you have a very busy day talking about the peasants rebellion of 1381. The Uprising, starring Andrew Garfield, is out September 10th. Pre-order Dan's new book. He's just a treasure, the most readable historian I think we have. Thank you so much for joining us. See you at Disneyland.

• 35:44Speaker 03

  Thank you, Dan.

• 35:54Dana Schwartz?

  Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manke. Noble Blood is hosted by me, Dana Schwartz. Writers for Noble Blood are Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Paul Jaffe, Natasha Lasky, and me, Dana Schwartz. The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk and Gomes Griffin, with supervising producer, Reema Ilkayali, and executive producers, Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 36:35Dana Schwartz?

  If you know Connor Tomlinson from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum, you know he's one of the most delightful people on television. He's also a serious history nerd. He has a new fun history podcast called What the Fact?, co-hosted with Carter Roy from Conspiracy Theories and Murder: True Crime Stories. Every week, they take three unbelievable true facts from across history and tell you the story behind them. Carter sets the scene, and Connor brings the deep cuts, the hilarious tangents, and his infectious love of history. From the worst years to be alive, to the women so powerful they started wars, Connor

• 37:19Dana Schwartz?

  and Carter will take you all over the timeline. Every episode will leave you in a better mood and a little smarter. The wildest stuff is real, and the real stuff is way wilder than you think. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact? on your favorite podcast app, or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 37:43Speaker 04

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• 38:49Dana Schwartz?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.