History is often not what happened, it is what someone wants you to think happened. Stories about the past are often ‘improved’, to speak more to present concerns, or to be more satisfying emotionally. The Middle Ages is one of the most misunderstood periods in human history. It is ridiculed, satirised, wondered at and glorified in equal measure, and for over a hundred years, cinema has been an important forum for that process. Movies set in the medieval period are as numerous as Westerns, and have become, over time, one of the dominant sources for our awareness of the ‘Age of Chivalry’. In this slightly light-hearted lecture, we ‘out’ some of the worst offenders in the history of medieval cinema and celebrate a few of the rare heroes, judging them against the reality on which they are supposedly based
THE ARTS SOCIETY ACCREDITED LECTURER
Dr Tobias Capwell
Toby is Curator of Arms and Armour at the Wallace Collection in London and an internationally-acknowledged authority on Medieval and Renaissance weapons. He is the author of numerous books on the subject of arms and armour, including Masterpieces of European Arms and Armour at the Wallace Collection (2011; Apollo Magazine Book of the Year 2012); The Noble Art of the Sword: Fashion and Fencing in Renaissance Europe 1520-1630, ex. cat. (2012); Armour of the English Knight 1400-1450 (2015; Military History Monthly Illustrated Book of the Year 2017); and most recently Arms and Armour of the Medieval Joust (2018). Toby also appears regularly on television, most recently on A Stitch in Time (2018; BBC4); as presenter and armour advisor on Richard III: The New Evidence (2014; C4), and as the writer and presenter of Metalworks: The Knight's Tale (2012; BBC4). In 2015 Toby had the unusual honour of serving as one of the two fully armoured horsemen escorting the remains of King Richard III, from the battlefield at Bosworth to their final resting place in Leicester Cathedral.
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