Hat tip to my old historical mucker Ben Wilson for drawing my attention to a BBC Radio 4 drama series beginning this Sunday. ‘Plantagenet’ consists of three plays by Mike Walker, covering the Angevin years of the Plantagenet dynasty. The first tells the old ‘Lion in Winter’ story - of Henry II’s bitter wars with his sons and wife over the succession to the vast Angevin realm of England, Normandy, Anjou, and Aquitaine. The second looks at Richard I’s reign; the third examines the pathetic spectacle of John’s.
This is just the subject matter I am currently wrestling with in writing my next book, which will cover all the Plantagenets from Henry II to Richard II. So I’ll be listening with interest, and posting my thoughts in due course.
Incidentally, and on the subject of the BBC and the Angevins: there was, in the late 1970s, an apparently quite brilliant 13-part television series dramatising the whole period from c1133-1268. It was called The Devil’s Crown. I did some sleuthing via a BBC chum last year, trying to see if it was available on DVD. Alas, it is not. It is stored in the BBC archives, but only on VHS. And, worse, several of the original tapes are now missing. If you’ve got a full set gathering dust in your attic, then a) you’re sitting on a goldmine, and b) can I borrow it, please?
Picked this up around the time the second installment of Plantagenet was aired earlier this year. Like you, I’d love to see The Devil’s Crown (in my case “again” as I saw it back in 1978) and your comment that some episodes may have been lost led me to contact the BFI. They do have an entire series (on VHS) for researchers to view. So it looks like it hasn’t been lost forever.
Hi, I made audio copies of The Devil’s Crown back home in Tasmania in 1980 (placing cassette recorder next to TV)- I still have episodes 5,10,11,12 and 13 with perhaps not so perfect sound quality but nonetheless enjoyable to listen to. I’m sure the BBC will eventually release them on DVD.