Marc Morris, born in 1973, is a British historian of the Middle Ages who came to popular writing through the archive rather than the studio. Educated at King’s College London and at Merton College, Oxford, he was awarded a doctorate in 2004 for a thesis on the Bigod earls of Norfolk in the thirteenth century, and the book that grew out of it was praised for its impeccable research and its fluent sense of narration.
Television followed. He presented Castle for Channel 4 and wrote the volume that accompanied the series, and he has since built a wide readership with A Great and Terrible King, on Edward I, The Norman Conquest, and King John. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
What distinguishes him is temperament. Morris writes narrative history without novelising it, keeps the evidence in plain view, and is candid about the places where the record simply runs out. For anyone who wants the early medieval centuries explained rather than mythologised, he is among the safest pairs of hands in Britain.
13 hours and 18 minutes
