Gone Medieval - How to be a Medieval Teenager

Episode Date: November 29, 2024

Matt Lewis is joined by Alice Loxton to explore the lives of 18-Year-Olds through historyFrom Bede surviving a devastating plague to Empress Matilda's unexpected rise to power after the White Ship disaster, and Geoffrey Chaucer's adventurous youth in royal courts and French campaigns, discover how turning 18 has dramatically evolved over the centuries. Learn about the key moments and experiences that shaped these young lives and how they relate to the challenges faced by today's youth.Music from Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis and edited by Amy Haddow. The producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://uk.surveymonkey.com/r/6FFT7MK Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world,

to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and murders to find the stories big and small that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were. We've gone medieval. 18. Such a long time ago now. I'm reminded of Baz Luhrmann's Everybody's Free

when he says, you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. Okay, I'm showing my age, I know, in sentiment and in cultural reference points. It might be closer for you than it is for me, or maybe a little further away. Perhaps it's looming on your horizon. Wherever it is, Alice Lockstone's new book, 18, A History of Britain in 18 Young Lives, is a fascinating new look at what it's been like to be 18 over the past millennium or so. Alice is a former history hitter, now carving a path across social media, print media and television screens. So it's a pleasure to welcome her to gone medieval. Welcome to Gone Medieval, Addis. I can't believe it's taken this long to find an excuse to get you on here. Thank you so much for having me.

It's very exciting day. And how is life outside of history hits? Yes. Well, obviously history hit was wonderful when I was there, but it's lots of exciting things happening and lots of making TikToks about churches and cathedals and castles and that sort of thing. So yeah, very busy. And your new book, 18, so this is a look at the lives of very very, very busy. And your new book 18, so this is a look at the lives of various people across time and what they were up to when they were 18 years old. Why did you feel like that was a good way to look at people and why is 18 a good age to pick out to? Well, I suppose basically what I did was pick this totally modern concept. So turning 18 is not something that historically is an important age.

And in general, say in the medieval period, people might have had all the markings of adulthood much earlier on. so they might have got married, you know, in their early teens, say, or had a huge amount of responsibility or taken people to battle when they're 15. So I think 18 is a modern concept, actually, this kind of marking of adulthood. And what I wanted to do to kind of make sense of what that means for us today is look at 1,000 years of 18-year-olds in history and see what they're up to. And the big takeaway really is that in the past, because 18-year-olds have had this enormous amount of responsibility,

you know, say Nelson has gone to see. for six years already. Interesting that actually young people are capable of so much. And it's this kind of demonstration of the extraordinary things that if put in the situation, 18-year-olds would step up the mark and achieve quite remarkable things. Yeah, I guess in the medieval world,

as you said, lots of people have loads of responsibility way before the age of 18. They could be married, they could be fighting and all that kind of thing. But they also had this weird notion that you don't come of age to your 21. You don't inherit your lands and all of that sort of stuff until you're 21, which I think is why we still have,

hangover interest in the age of 21, which is much less important today than 18 probably is. But they did this weird kind of sense that you could do lots and lots of adult stuff, but actually wait till you're 21 for some of it. Well, one of the questions that I asked in the book then is about, I suppose there's adolescence with this kind of biological thing about puberty. But then there's also kind of maturity. Some kind of scientists today don't think that our brains are fully developed until our 30th. So obviously I'm waiting for that moment still. But they, but you know,

there's all, actually all these different kind of quite complex markings of when we've fully become an adult. So it's quite a tricky question to answer, you know, when does adulthood, when does maturity start? And especially over a thousand years. But, you know, just using this, this kind of marker of 18, of one age group. And I think it would be an interesting book to do it with any age. You know, you could write this book about people who are 60 and see what they've achieved or haven't achieved. But yeah, it kind of brings up all sorts of quite surprising stories of what people are up to. Yeah, you could do an Adele. See, the next one could be 21. And for what it's worth, I'm 48 and my wife is still waiting for me to grow up. So, yeah, for some of us it takes a little

bit longer. I guess it's also an interesting way to try to connect younger people with, with history, to give them a window into what is happening. You know, your book came out on A-level Results Day. People are going through a lot at the age of 18 at the moment, and it's perhaps an interesting way for them to view history. What are people doing at my stage of life throughout the last thousand years? Yes. I mean, in some ways, it demonstrates that young people are capable of huge things. So they are capable of Empress Matilda who will get onto, you know, wielding a huge amount of responsibility, basically being a kind of queen figure already, this amazing diplomat. But on the other side of the coin, I also wanted to show that lots of young people or lots of people in history

who go on to become incredibly famous or successful or khaki, as say Vivian Westwood, had no idea that they were going to do that at the age of 18. So I didn't want it to be one of those books that you read it and think, I'll know I've messed up because all these people have achieved so turned 18. But actually there are... I'm 19. It's over. I'm past it. So I hope it will offer people this kind of perspective that actually, you know, things in life happen in all sorts of unexpected ways, say like Flora McDonald is one of the people I write about. And she at the age of 18 had absolutely no idea that this random weird event of Bonnie Prince Charlie arriving where she was, which happened several years later, and that would transform her life. And so there's a mixture of some

things where, like Vivian West, which she kind of create her career. There's other things where these weird events are kind of thrust upon people like Forron McDonald's. And also it's not just kind of a career thing. It's also personal and family relationships. So to the example of Elizabeth I think that lots of people might think she had a wonderful life because she was born into royalty. But actually, I think she had a pretty awful upbringing because, you know, all of these pretty traumatic events that happened, for example, her father dying, her mother being executed, four stepmothers being caught up in the Thomas Seymour scandal all before the age of 18. And so, yeah, I think it hopefully offers them new and interesting.

spectums for young people today. Yeah. And the first kind of medieval person that appears, or the first person that appears in the book, is Beed. And I was really interested in that because we have this image of the venerable Beed, this ancient elderly, father Christmas looking figure, sitting in a room, squinting at a book by candlelight. And quite interesting to think about Beed at the age of 18, because I think, you know, we don't do that. We have this image of people in history. Beed is an old man, almost as if he was born 60 years old. Why was he a good candidate to start with? Well, literally for the reasons that you've just set out

in that we always perceive people in history. I think it's a general thing. We always perceive people in history, or we often do in the kind of moment of their success. So that might be being this old guy in the scriptorium, it might be the moment that people's portraits are painted, and so you always visualise them in that way. And I basically wanted to,

emphasize that these actually, these were real people, you know, I think so often in history, at least I find this from that, you think about people like Henry the Eighth and they sometimes think like, you sometimes think about them like characters in a story, but actually they were real people just as real as you and I. And so I guess what I wanted to do is match, is make it really believable for people that someone like B was a real person who actually did live near Newcastle. I mean, what's interesting is that actually lots of historians would be quite surprised that I wrote the whole chapter on Beads Young Life because there's pretty much no evidence about what he was up to. But it's amazing how much you can piece together. Like we know that he would have

gone to this monastery around the age of seven, which is a pretty crazy thing for our modern standards that, you know, you'd be taken away from your family to be sent to this monastery. And I'm kind of just explaining what the monastery was, this arrival of Christianity. That would have been a pretty exciting and cool place to go at that point in history, even though we think about a monastery as being like a very old, you know, old world, angry, such a thing. But it was very exciting at the time and just explaining, you know, or imagining what it would have been like that little boy to walk into the monastery for the first time, to see things, he'd never seen before, things like stained glass.

They had this amazing stained glass there, had these amazing paintings and decorations on the walls. So kind of really trying to evote what that might have been like in a way that a film might like today. But the big, big moment in Bees Young Life is that there's this terrible plague that comes from the monastery and everyone in the monastery dies apart from this guy who's a kind of teacher and then this young lad and we think that young lad is bead and so um i think that's a pretty extraordinary thing to happen if you actually imagine a plague coming you know you seeing this entire monastery of people dying you probably having to carry the bodies out having to to go through this

pretty traumatic thing and most historians will just and loads of biographies will just mention that in the first chapter or so and then move on to all of beads writing in the rest of his life. But actually, I just wanted to really focus in on that because I guess if you think that you've survived this terrible thing and you're a man of faith, you probably come out about being like, wow, I've been chosen.

You know, there's a reason that I am here. And then he goes on and he stays in the monastery his whole life and he's really prolific at writing all these books. So I do think there is this link between his later life and his child source that's quite important. But yeah, I love writing out of our bees. And I've always loved, I've always had a soft spot for bead. I think I've always found it funny that he's called the venerable bead.

And lots of people do write in him quite a funny character. So, I don't know, maybe it was just, I was just fond of him and I really want to be clear of him. Yeah, yeah, any excuse. A bit of Anglo-Saxon Geordy Shores. No, but that's the other thing, though, that because he, what I writes about in the book is that because he would have spent those time, like preparing all these skins as someone, and that the other thing that I'd write about in the book, that because he was writing these books, he was probably spending all this time preparing the skins,

going down in the river, I'm going to carry these really kind of heavy and wet skins. And, you know, it's quite like a labour-intensive work to prepare that. And it drew me to the conclusion that he'd probably be quite musly and he'd probably quite ripped. I did actually think of Geordie Short. I was thinking about those shows. He's basically this Geordie. He's like really hunky. That's why I want to like rewrite bead into the history books.

I'm never going to think of bead the same again now. I'm never going to look at that image of him as an old bearded man the same. I mean, Bid, you know, he's someone who has this huge reputation, the father of English history, a prolific writer, the reason that we have the Anno Domini system of dating and he's looking at the stars and all of these incredible things. How much of that potential had he realized at 18? I'm guessing I know the answer. But it's interesting, I think, that he will become such a significant figure. yet by the age of 18, how much of that would he realistically have seen in his own future maybe? I think, first of all, I think it's impossible to say and impossible to know, because we actually just don't know. And this is where I have to be kind of, have limitations with the book in that I have to just say,

this is what we think of his life and this is the conclusion that I can draw from all these things. But ultimately, we don't know for sure. But I think the plague that he survives has a massive impact. I also think we forget that monasteries were this really exciting new thing and they were really on a mission to build these and to spread the words. In Bede Young Life, the ageating, they've already started building another monastery. So he's on this mission to start another monastery in the Newcastle. So this is the Jaro and the Wimler monasteries, which you can still go to stay, you go and see the churches today and see the kind of remains of where Bede was. But I don't think anyone in history could ever have a sense of ending up being known as things like the father of English history, 1400 years later.

But I do think he has a kind of big mission to create these amazing books into all this amazing writing. And I think he possibly had a sense of that legacy. Yeah, interesting how that experience in his childhood with the plague and everything might have shaped his desire to achieve a lot. You know, he had an awareness, I guess, of the fragility of life. that the plague could come along and wipe you out at any moment, that sense that you only have a limited amount of time is sometimes the big compulsion to actually get lots of stuff done. Yeah, he was wasting no time.

And he definitely, I think you're right. Like, he did definitely have a sense of that. And if it was me, I know that that would make me be quite busy. Empress Matilda also makes an appearance in your book, as she should, quite rightly. She should be in almost every book. What was Matilda up to on her 18th birthday? What is she doing when she's 18? Well, I wanted to include Matilda because in her late teens, her whole life is turned

upside down. So she already has a remarkable life that, you know, from our modern perceptions, is that she grows up in England, but she is taken away to marry the Holy Roman Emperor. And that's quite a remarkable thing. And she's given huge amounts of responsibility. Like, she's basically in charge of Italy. And, you know, she's ruling on behalf of her husband. husband in lots of different ways. And, you know, she probably thought when she was a teenager

that that was where her life would be forever. And she would have children there and she would create the great dynasty and be part of that story being an empress. But of course, the white ship disaster happens in 1120 and that changes everything. And suddenly she's brought back, well, it also happens because her husband, Heinrich V, dies. But she is brought back eventually to England and then she's kind of embroiled in the anarchy, that civil war. But that's all because of this random freak accident of the white ship disaster, where all of the cream of aristocratic youth, they all perish in the English Channel.

So I thought she was quite a good example of someone who's, you know, everything was, everything changed in a way that she could never predict it or prepared for. And I guess that's like a good example for 18-year-old today is that so often in life, You know, it's not actually, if you do really well in your Duties or your A-levels, because there's actually all these random events, you know, that you can't control, that even Empress Matilda couldn't control, that will shape the course of your life. And it's actually more about how you can overcome these unpredictable challenges than the things that you can prepare for.

But yeah, she's a great character. I mean, she's just so impressive by the age of 18. And I always think about these characters, like, would I have been able to do that at the age of 18? Is it a nature thing? Is it a nurture thing? But from what I read about her, it seemed like she had this amazing training to be a kind of diplomat, to be a politician, in that she was growing up, you know, with her parents and meeting such important people at such young age and being in the court and being very familiar with all these kind of diplomatic figures, I suppose. Yeah, I think she's an amazing character. And not many people seem to know about her. I don't think she made the kind of cut as like the really famous medieval queens or the famous women from history. So hopefully we can. We can do something to chase that.

Yeah, set that right. Everyone ought to know about Empress Matilda. Yeah. Yeah, and there is a really strong sense that her husband, Heinrich V, Henry V, Henry V, the Holy Roman Emperor, is really crafting her to be a partner in his power. She receives this intense education. She's taught languages.

She's taught politics. She's shipped off to Italy in her teens and allowed to rule part of Henry's, empire on his behalf in her kind of mid-teens. And you're right, you think, you know, could I have done that? Would I have had enough about me to have done that? Was it the training? And I think, like you said, the interesting thing and perhaps the comparison with Beed or the juxtaposition with Beed is that Empress Matilda was prepared for a really significant, important life in the Holy Roman Empire. As you said, is a wife, a mother, part of a dynasty.

But what she turned out, the ways in which she turned out being important weren't what she was expecting. And there was a big need to adapt what she's planned. So she thought her life was planned out. Those plans get ripped up. Yeah, I know it's just everything's changed completely. And would she have known that this terrible civil war, this anarchy, would have been playing out? I don't think she would have done. And I don't think she would have thought that she would be so involved in it as well.

Yeah. And I guess it's an interesting examination of how. how the experiences that you've had by the age of 18 can prepare you for the troubles that will come later in life. You know, Matilda does go through the anarchy. She struggles in parts, but she essentially makes sure that her son becomes king of England. And it's interesting to think how much of that ability and determination and focus was instilled

in her by the age of 18 by this incredible education that she had. Yeah, definitely. And also, I mean, she, you know, later on in life, I think, she's dealing quite a lot with a lot of European parties. And I suppose that influence of being the person who was the wife of the Holy Roan Emperor and having that kind of more international experience must have been pretty useful throughout her life. I mean, I see her as this amazing kind of diplomatic figure.

You know, when you look at some of the events later on in life with Thomas Beckett and things like that. Yeah, I mean, I know she had some failings, but I think it is quite impressive what she do. Yeah, I think you can talk about her as this kind of political figure. And if you were writing a book like the greatest politicians or the greatest diplomats in history, like she could be one of those things. On a slightly broader note while we're still in Prist Matilda, how different did you find the experiences of men and women, maybe during the medieval period, but also throughout the book, how far apart have the experiences of men and women at the age of 18 being throughout

history. Well, yeah, that's a good question, especially in light of the medieval period, because when I was writing the book, I wanted to have a good range of people, you know, a mixture of men and women, a mixture of people from different periods of history, a mixture of people from different areas of the country, like a real range, some people who were prepared for what they, for what life would throw at them, some people who had no idea it was coming. But in the medieval period, I was struck, even after working in the kind of history world and research and lots of things for a while now. I was struck at how hard it was to find a woman who wasn't a royal, like Empress Matilda, who, and there were records of her life in her younger years. And so often

there were accounts of people, they would say things like, oh, we don't know anything about them until they're 35 or something when this important thing happened. So I did find it really hard to kind of find someone to write about in that period, to represent that period. And the other person I talk about is Jeffrey Chaucer. So there are lots of men. who we know about their lives and they're not necessarily royals or anything. So that was quite striking. I think what's the kind of interesting women that I write about, basically the ones before the Georgian period say,

they are interesting because things have happened to them that, I guess there's not that much agency. So it's people like Empress Matilda, Elizabeth I first, who were both born into quite extraordinary things. And then the other one's Flora McDonald, who, again, this quite crazy thing happens to her. and she's a pretty unusual character. And so actually for the female figures in the book,

the ones that have more agency are much later on, and that's people like Vivian Westwood or Theta Sactyl West or Roslyn Franklin or Mary Anning. And so, and that's because that's the kind of reflection of society, I think. So, yeah, it was hard to, I mean, I think that the medieval, the medieval and tudor men that I write about have definitely more opportunities and more agency. So that's a kind of interesting pattern of history.

That's why there's two queens, Elizabeth and Matilda, and there's no other royals in the book because I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't like another, you know, we hear so much about kind of royals and things like that. So I just wanted to expand that story really. But yeah, it was quite hard to make it an even reflection of women's experiences. Like I would love to have included a woman who just do something quite normal in like the 1400s or something.

But it's just really hard to find people like that. Yeah, yeah. You mentioned Jeffrey Chaucer is another medieval figure who crops up into the book, who, you know, will become a legend. Did it look like he was going to be a legend when he was 18? I don't think so, but I think all of the markings of his future success were there. So Jeffrey Chaucer was living in London. He was the son of a vintner. He survived the black death in his childhood.

So again, that's quite an amazing experience. And then he was in a royal household. and then he goes to France and he's on this campaign and he's in this siege where he does actually get captured by the French and I don't know how that happened but I like to imagine him kind of causing trouble and making a nuisance of himself I think I sort of imagine it like oh you know they're all there in the camp like oh no why has Geoffrey Chorsela been captured it kind of feels quite unnecessary but but he's he's an interesting character because I think obviously a great strength of his writings which comes much later on is that he had this amazing understanding of people and different types of people.

And growing up as a businessman's son in central London, he'd have gone down to the shoreline, to the docks, so that, you know, the port, if you like. And he's seen all of these products coming in from all around the world, heard all these different voices, you know, he's really in the heart of the hustle and bustle of the city. And then he goes to France. I mean, imagine him walking through France, probably, you know, he might have to be. have talked to all the different people who had been on that campaign, all kinds of backgrounds. And then he was, you know, captured by the French.

He must have been exposed to, you know, their lives in a way that many people would never have been. And if you think about him as this amazing writer and a kind of someone who was so able to capture the follies and foibles of all kinds of different people's experiences, then I feel like actually that upbringing was really, really good for that. Yeah, yeah. I... What do you think? say first, I struggle with Jeff Chaucer in the sense that I love the film A Knight's Tale. So when you say imagine Jeff Chaucer walking through France, I'm seeing Paul Bettany naked and I'm struggling

to get that out of my mind now. And he's naked in it. But yeah, I think, so, you know, Chaucer is very similar to Dickens, I guess, in that sense that he captures a spirit of a time and his experiences mean that he understands what normal people are going through. So however high, Chaucer rises, you know, he will get into royal households, he will have some really good jobs, he'll be really close to the Duke of Lancaster and all of those kinds of people. His sister-in-law marries John of Gorn, the Duke of Lancaster. So he has all of these routes into power, but it's ordinary people that interest him when he comes to sit down and writes about people. He doesn't write stories of great

dukes and kings and wars and battles. He writes about a bunch of people. He writes about a bunch of of random people going on a pilgrimage to Canterbury and things like that, because that's clearly what his interests are. And I think you're right that his upbringing around those busy ports in London and a mercantile background means that he is exposed to loads of people. Experience in France puts him in camps with soldiers. You know, he's not at this point in his own tent somewhere as a kind of general figure. He's with the ordinary people. And I think it's striking that that seems to be what sticks with him for the rest of his life is that ordinary people's stories are actually the interesting ones. Yeah, because he could have been writing, you know, he was pretty exposed to

the kings and queens of the day. You know, he could have been writing kind of great tales of the royal courts and things, but he doesn't really tend to be interested in that. Yeah, he sort of shuns the chivalric romance to some extent in favour of just writing ordinary stories. And he shuns French or Latin to write in vernacular English. And all of those things you think may well be a direct result of what young Jeff has seen up until he's 18. Yeah, I think so. But it's all speculation in some ways. The other thing about Geoffrey Chaucer is that,

so Marion Turner wrote an amazing book about him, The European Life. She's the kind of expert at Oxford about Chaucer. And she picked up on the fact that the first record we have, of Chaucer is when he was given this piece of clothing in the court that he was in that in the household that he was working in and it's this really risque piece of clothing the paltok and and it was like this tunic and it was basically really exposed below the ways so it's like really tight and people blamed this kind of clothing on causing the black death and inciting god's rock and stuff. So that was one of the kind of funny things that you can pick up on in the book is that actually

in these early years, I mean, you might think about Chaucer as the diplomat, as figure, as a poet, but actually the first record we have of him that survives is him wearing this outrageous piece of clip. I like the idea. So far, we've got a ripped bead and we've got Chaucer wearing high fashion, risque fashion. And I guess if I were to allow you to move away from the medieval period, which you shouldn't ever want to do, obviously. Who would you say is your favourite figure in the book at the age of 18? I think Mary Anning's a really interesting figure because she has actually achieved a huge amount. She is the woman who was born in 1799 and she was living in Lying Regis on the south coast of England and she was collecting fossils. So she's an amazing paleontologist. And even by

the age of 18, she had collected some of the most impressive specimens, which is still on display in the Natural History Museum, still a big part of their country. collection. So she already made this amazing contribution to, you know, our understanding of that and our understanding of fossils. But what was so unmarful about her is that she was basically self-educated in that she hadn't gone to a really smart school. She didn't have really loads of connections. She didn't have loads of money. And they basically lived in a very humble way on the South Coast. You know, they didn't have any money. They were very poor. But she just went out and she stepped out in the house that she was living in and she just looked at the natural world around her.

and she just looked carefully and long and hard and came to these amazing conclusion. And she was years before Darwin. And so actually she's kind of thinking it's not just collecting these old fossils and kind of, you know, wow, isn't that like physically this amazing thing? She is actually opening our eyes or she was actually opening people's eyes to the entire origins of the world. And to have that understanding at the age of 18, there would be men, learned men from London, would come and talk to her because she was generally considered as an expert on the topic already by the time of 18. So she's pretty impressive. But I think I just like how low-key she is in that

it kind of proves that anyone could achieve something like that because, you know, you just got to think really carefully about things and just be determined and focused. But it's funny, you must find this as well when you write about people, Matt, is that you become really fond of people or you kind of feel like you get in the... So what I've been... I think people will be very well aware that that's a trap I fall into all the time. I write books about people that I actually quite like. One day I ought to write a book about someone I hate and see how it goes. Yeah, yeah.

Well, that's the thing. I mean, when I selected the people that I was writing about, I do like them more because I wanted to be quite an inspiring book. And because of that, there are some people you have to leave out. Like, I thought it would be really interesting to look at Guy Fawkes. Like, how did this young man who was living in York, how does he become so, you know, end up doing this incredibly extreme thing? But of course you don't actually want to encourage people to,

you want to encourage people to follow in the footsteps of the people they're reading about. And Guy Fawkes is not someone you should hold up on a pedestal. So there are some people you have to leave out because of that. But you do become fond of them and you go and visit their houses. And I've realized that even more so than before, that visiting the places where these things happen is so important. You know, for Mary Anning, just walking along that coasts in Lyme Regis

is quite an extraordinary place. Or there's this other woman I ride about Sarah Biffin, who is this disabled. woman and she becomes this amazing artist. She learns the paint with her with a paint brush on her mouth. And she's born in this village in North Samaset called East Quantock said,

and when you go there, you're like, this is actually extraordinary that she did become so famous and successful because it's like such a sleepy little place. You know, you would have no idea that, I mean, even like the idea that this woman, this little baby girl was born there in 1784, this disabled baby from a very poor background

who was also a woman. But so much was a gay turf, and yet she did so well. So, yeah, it's been really interesting to write about it and just have, like, open up these kind of different blinces into all parts of British history. Yeah, yeah, it's a really interesting way to look at it all. I wondered as well, writing the book, did you get a sense of how being 18 has changed over all of the centuries that you cover? Is it harder now? Is it easier? Has expectations kind of grown or shrunk or have. they just changed because you could put, you know, medieval people were on battlefields at the age of 16, but they didn't have to deal with social media and being trolled in their bedroom and all of that kind of stuff and the pressures of exams that we have today. So is it easier, harder or just different? I think the big thing about the modern age that people don't tend to think about, you know, we always talk about social media and how difficult that is. But actually, the big thing is that we, in the past,

whatever annoying thing that you have to deal with today, people in the past would have been doing that but they would have had a terrible toothache or they'd have had gout or they would have been in pain a lot of the time or they wouldn't have been able to see very well or more likely they would have been dead. Like most people today,

like in the past, if you made it to the age of 18, you're doing pretty well already. Though I think we can be grateful at least that our health is, you know, the situation of our health is much more favourable. So I'm grateful for that. But I think it is, obviously it is, it is different today. I think, you know, it is a blessing in today's world that

we can go to school and we spend our youth in school and we have the space to be learning about the world and this kind of safe 18 first years where in the past people would have been working or they were forced to basically be an adult at a very young age, you know, maybe in the Victorian period you might be working as soon as you could work, you know, working under, a cotton machine or something like that. But I think what I've sort of written about a lot with this book in terms of articles for the paper. So they keep asking me this, you know, like in terms of GCSE and A-Level results, how should we think about the past? Is that what it, you know, it is, it is much better for 18 years today, despite all of the social media and everything.

And people have so many opportunities in a way that even in the last 100 years people didn't have. So Vivian Westwood's the most recent one I write about in the book. And she doesn't go on, She's an art school. She drops out of art school. She becomes a typist and a teacher. She trains in all these different ways. But she was just, she couldn't even consider that there was a career in art. That wasn't just her being an artist with a paintbrush.

And so I think today we have, people are much more open to these ideas of different careers. And that's sort of been an amazing thing. But I would also say that the big, like, takeover from the book for 18 or us today is that, though it's wonderful that you can just kind of focus on school exams, exams, and that is a blessing of modern society, the past does show us that 18-year-olds have the capability to achieve so much, and that you probably are capable of a lot more than you think, which is an exciting thing. And I also think that the school exam system today, although it's very good at measuring academic success, can you write an essay? When you look at the

course of history and the 18-year-olds in that, it is not the kind of skills that tested in school exams which get people ahead in life or which saved them in moments of difficulty. It's actually markings of character. So the courage of Elizabeth I first when she was tested in the Thomas Seymour scandal. That is a better skill to have or the kind of daring of Nelson even at the age of 18 or the kind of I suppose entrepreneurial spirit of Sarah Biffin or the deter, you know, Mary Anning just going out and kind of teaching herself, this kind of understanding of the world. So I think actually it does show that with A-levels, you know, we're very focused on academics today, but I think there's so many wider markings of character that are more important to get right. And, you know, I was saying to

lots of people who've, if you fail, judicistee results or A-level results, don't worry. The most important thing is that you can overcome a difficulty like that, because that's a better achievement, I think, than a maths paper, even though that's a, is important. Well, I mean, I was, I was going to end by sort of saying that you've been gathering in the book and across social media and stuff, you've been gathering advice from people that they would give to an 18-year-old in the world today. And I was going to, I was going to kind of end by saying what would be your advice to an 18-year-old. And maybe you've covered a bit of it there. But yeah, so in the book, I asked a few celebs at the back to give their advice.

And I also did some interviews with lots of the historians at some of the festivals I was at this summer, what advice would you give to 18 years today? And the big takeaway that Lotson said was don't worry. They just said, don't worry about not knowing what you want to do. They said, follow the thing that you're passionate about. And that will be it, you know, that will take you to whatever the end point is. And I think, when I think about myself and my career, when I was 18, the career that I've had didn't exist in that social media wasn't a thing. Like you, Instagram and TikTok wasn't a thing when I was 18. But what I have done is just follow my interest in history and making videos and making content.

And then I ended up a history hit. And then I ended up doing, you know, lots of similar things and writing books and things. So in hindsight, it all makes sense. And but obviously hindsight is a useful thing. But, you know, you're also, you followed your interest. And now you're working as a presenter and having a podcast and stuff. So I think in terms of the history world and people who are writing and presenting, that does, that is often the case. They just always follow this kind of passion for history.

But yeah, it's quite hard to give advice because it's so, I mean, it's also hard to draw confusions from this book of like over 1,000 years of 18-year-olds. And like, draw it a simple completion from that. But it is inspiring seeing people in the past. You know, it is inspiring reading about someone like Empress Matilda or Mary Anning or Elizabeth I think she's an amazing figure because of what she has gone through in a kind of emotionally traumatic way.

And it's all of that trauma. and difficulty and learning to kind of hold that and overcome that or at least deal with it that makes her an amazing queen. I mean, she had that middle way and she was, you know, she never, she never got married and she never kind of committed herself to anyone and she was in some ways very cautious. But you could argue that that was the making of her. Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. It's been absolutely fantastic to talk to you, Alice. It's been great to find an excuse to get you on gone medieval. And I hope you have to do something else medieval so you can come back and talk to us again. Okay, okay, that's the deal. Well, thank you so much for having me.

Thanks very much, Alice. Alice's new book, 18, a history of Britain in 18 young lives is out now and offers a fresh way to look at history through the eyes, achievements and experiences of 18-year-olds. If you've enjoyed this episode, you can find out more about Beed's achievements that earned him the venerable title in an episode we did with Michelle Brown. We've got a great chat with Kath Hanley on Empress Matilda. and a bit of chaucer for you too with Marion Turner. There are new installments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday,

so please come back and join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts from and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can listen to us and all of History Hits podcasts, Let's ad-free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. As a special gift, you'll get 50% off your first three months if you use the code medieval at checkout. Anyway, I'd better let you go.

I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history hit.