An Evening with Dan Jones on War, Plague and Lion Hearts (Part Two)

Summary

Intelligence Squared: An Evening with Dan Jones on War, Plague and Lionhearts (Part Two)

Date: October 19, 2025
Host: Intelligence Squared (Alice Loxton & Mia Sorrenti)
Guest: Dan Jones

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Episode Overview

This live episode re-joins historian and novelist Dan Jones and host Alice Loxton for Part Two of a discussion about the research, process, and personal experiences behind Jones’s "Essex Dogs" trilogy, with a special focus on the final installment, "Lionhearts." The conversation, held at Smith Square Hall in London, delves into challenges of writing historical fiction, character creation, the role of AI in creativity, castles and their imaginative power, and audience Q&A with fans.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Challenges of Writing Historical Fiction

• Dramatizing History: Dan Jones reflects on the particular challenges of weaving real historical events, such as labor laws and Windsor Castle festivities, into compelling fiction.
  • "How do you go about dramatizing a law that's about, you know, sort of labor legislation? ...You’ve just got to create a scenario and then put your characters in. And if you’re sure of your characters...they'll find a way." — Dan Jones [02:09]
• Emotional Toll: Jones discusses the intensely stressful writing process for "Lionhearts," intentionally writing at breakneck speed to create a sense of lived urgency, which left him emotionally drained by the end.
  • "The biggest challenge, really...was that in a moment of desperate masochism, I decided to write this book as fast as I possibly could...nearly did myself some psychological damage writing this book." — Dan Jones [03:57]

Trilogy Structure and Future Projects

• Why a Trilogy? Jones wanted the Essex Dogs series to build into a larger publishing project, favoring an epic, sequential approach over an open-ended series.
  • "A trilogy, because...I wanted to build a franchise of a sort...I wanted this to be a bigger project than a one and done." — Dan Jones [06:54]
  • He contrasts trilogies with series like Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, and hints the “door isn’t locked,” so more stories could be possible [07:41].
• Next Steps: Jones reveals he’s writing a non-fiction book about castles, pushing the frame wider than his TV series "Secrets of Great British Castles."

Character Creation & Inspirations

• Creating Romford: The complex fan-favorite character started as a “tag along” and developed unpredictable traits, such as substance abuse, borrowing from archetypes in Vietnam war films.
  • "In one word, I would describe his character as fiend...with this kind of innocence...you just desperately want to put your arm around him." — Dan Jones [13:37]
• Character Research: Jones draws visual inspiration from historical art books, letting faces "stare at him" until personalities emerge. Sometimes he borrows traits from friends, acquaintances, or even his local landlord.
• Real vs. Fictional Characters: Fictional characters allow more play, but real historical figures provide a framework with set parameters. Jones was influenced by James Ellroy’s "American Tabloid" for dealing with the real characters as "grotesques" rather than sanitized heroes.

Historical Battles: The Longbow & the French

• Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt: Jones offers a nuanced, battlefield-focused analysis of why the French repeatedly fell to the English longbow, highlighting generalship, army composition, and leadership failures.
  • "Crecy, the longbow is still sweeping everything before it...The French are outgeneralled by Edward III...Agincourt is cosplay Crecy." — Dan Jones [35:49]

AI and the Future of Creative Writing

• On AI’s Threat and Human Creativity: Jones expresses concern about the rapid improvement of AI in writing, especially in formulaic or "slop" writing, and critiques education for training humans to write like machines.
  • "We have been training human minds for too long to think like and replicate machine thought...we must put a premium on human creativity, human genius, human inspiration." — Dan Jones [17:53]
• The Value of Live Events: Both Jones and Loxton agree that as AI proliferates, live, in-person events and genuine human interaction become even more valuable.

The Interplay of Fact and Fiction

• Responsibility to History: Jones defends the novelist’s right to deviate from strict historical accuracy, critiquing Hilary Mantel’s view that fiction writers must be rigorously faithful to the historical record.
  • "It’s pretty clear you have more responsibility in terms of getting it right as a historian. The selling point of historian is 'this happened.' The selling point of novelist is 'eh.'" — Dan Jones [27:59]
  • "It’s not my responsibility as the creator, to create something that's specifically like a made up story and make it follow the rules of something that's specifically not a made up story..." — Dan Jones [29:20]

Cutting Room Floor: The Scenes That Didn't Make It

• Scenes Sacrificed: Jones laments losing characters or scenes he loved, such as the captain’s bridge scene, due to plotting constraints and admits sometimes breaking the “kill your darlings” rule.
  • "I broke that rule. But I loved that scene with the captain on the bridge." — Dan Jones [23:21]

Castles: Book and Imagination

• Castles Book: Jones’s next nonfiction work, "The Castle," will cover the evolution of castles from the Bronze Age to the Nuclear Age, blending architectural history with the role of castles in myth and imagination.
  • "It’s a book that’s about the buildings and the imaginative world around them...from the Bronze Age to the Nuclear Age." — Dan Jones [40:15]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Trilogy’s Ending:
  • "I have...left it unlocked. Or at least no, I’ve locked the door, but the key is not very well hidden. It's under a flower pot." — Dan Jones [07:41]
• On Historical Fiction Being 'The Cheat’s Way Out':
  • "That’s why historical fiction’s the cheat’s way out...you sort of like buy a starter kit." — Dan Jones [06:10]
• On Writing Under Pressure:
  • "In order to give them their feeling of being right on the edge emotionally...I just had to be under immense stress myself. Well, I did it. I didn't feel too good at the end of it, I must say." — Dan Jones [04:25]
• On the Human Element in Art:
  • "Let’s lean into it...as the limitless vistas of free...information spill out before us, all accessible by the smartphone in your pocket. The one thing that remains at a premium because of its scarcity is that human interaction." — Dan Jones [20:29]
• On the Responsibilities of Novelists vs. Historians:
  • "The selling point of historian is ‘this happened’. The selling point of novelist is ‘eh’." — Dan Jones [27:59]
• On Inspiration from Grotesques, Not Heroes:
  • "I’m more interested in the gargoyles, you know, the ugly grotesques, the monstrous versions..." — Dan Jones [33:58]

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Audience Q&A Highlights (Timestamps Approximate)

• [09:56] Name Choices & Romford:
  • Dan explains the accidental and organic nature of naming Romford and shares how the character's complexity developed from contemporary war film influences.
• [14:01] Favorite Book in the Trilogy:
  • "It's like my kids...the one that's causing me least bother at any given moment." — Dan Jones
• [15:21] Favorite/Challenging Character:
  • Dan gravitates toward characters with "foul mouths," naming William de Bohun as a favorite.
• [16:03] On AI and the Creative Process:
  • Dan gives a philosophical reflection on the risks and opportunities of AI in art and writing.
• [22:34] Scenes Deleted:
  • The captain’s bridge scene, originally meant for book one, ended up as book two’s opener.
• [27:24] Greater Responsibility—Fiction or Nonfiction?:
  • Dan and Alice debate whether fiction’s reach or nonfiction’s accuracy has the greater burden of responsibility.
• [35:49] Why did the French Keep Losing to the Longbow?:
  • Dan explores tactical explanations and differences between key battles.
• [40:15] Castles Project:
  • Dan outlines his forthcoming book on castles as architectural and cultural phenomena.

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Final Notes / Closing

• [44:25] The event closes with reflections on the success of the trilogy and fan appreciation for Dan Jones’s work.
• Book Announcement: Dan’s new book "The Castle" is scheduled for release in autumn 2026.

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Engaging Takeaways

Dan Jones offers both granular insights into the creative juggling act of historical fiction and broader meditations on history, humanity, and the future of storytelling. He’s candid about the emotional and technical trials of writing, skeptical but not dismissive toward the rise of AI, and always passionate about blending rigorous research with vivid storytelling. He encourages aspiring writers to respect the line between history and fiction, keeps the door ajar for future adventures with his characters, and demonstrates that, sometimes, even the most epic tales must find their roots in personal trial, risky invention, and a dash of vulnerability.

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For More

• Listen to Part One of this conversation for the genesis of the Essex Dogs trilogy and deeper analysis.
• Watch for Dan Jones’s upcoming book "The Castle" (autumn 2026).
• Explore live events at Intelligence Squared for firsthand engagement with authors and thinkers.

Transcript

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[Mia Sorrenti]

Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti.

[Alice Loxton]

For this episode.

[Mia Sorrenti]

We're rejoining for Part two of our live event with Dan Jones and Alice Loxton on War, Plague and Lionhearts. In September, Dan and Alice joined us live on stage to discuss the Hundred Years War, Plague and the third and final installment of the Essex Docks trilogy, Lionhearts. If you haven't heard part one, we recommend jumping back and getting up to speed. And if you'd like to listen to this episode in full and ad free, why not become an Intelligence squared [e-mail] membership or tap the IQ2 extra button on Apple? Let's rejoin the conversation now live at Smith Square hall in London.

[Alice Loxton]

It must have been difficult, and there must be tensions at points where you're researching and you're looking at the historical sources and you're having to make decisions about, I suppose, how to interpret that or how to present it in fiction. Tell us about some of those moments which you were perhaps unsure or were more difficult to overcome.

[Dan Jones]

Yeah, the labor laws was a trick. You know, I knew I wanted to do something about this, but I mean, how do you go about dramatizing a law that's about, you know, sort of labor legislation? And I think what you've got to do is, as I've sort of suggested already, you've just got to create a scenario and then put your characters in. And if you're sure of your characters and these characters really seem to know who they are, they'll find a way. And you just sort of run, you know, part of the Job is you just put them into this situation. Go on, improvise. Show me what you've got. And so drawing the history out of that bit was an interesting challenge. The Windsor Castle scenes, I mean, again, sort of dramatizing the. The bits that I thought would be easy tended to be the more challenging bits. In a way, I thought, oh, well, the scenes at Windsor will just take care of themselves. You know, we'll have Edward, it's the Order of the Garter, they'll be prancing about. But, you know, what does prancing about mean? And what does it look like, actually, that digging in and creating or pulling a story out of the festivities around Windsor as an Order of the Garter weekend have to be sort of quite sure of what the purpose of this is in the story, and then knitting it all back together was something of. Not a challenge, a puzzle as well. And I think that one of the things that was in my mind as I wrote this book was I probably stitched myself up a lot of times in the last two books by going, I don't know how that resolves, but I'll figure it out in the end. And, well, the end is here now. And so bringing storylines back together in a way that's plausible, that's credible, and that is also sort of organic and follows this principle that I've been talking about, about just letting the characters do their thing. That was an interesting challenge. The biggest challenge, really, beyond any of that, was that in a moment of desperate masochism, I decided to write this book as fast as I possibly could. In fact, faster than I possibly could. I'd said many times, only half joking, in writing these books, that in order to give them their feeling of being right on the edge emotionally, somewhere really quite difficult, I myself had to live in that world. And that had sort of been true, you know, I'd accidentally. To begin with, partly deliberately, second time around, and fully deliberately to begin with this one, I'd got into my head that in order to just. In order to create this feeling, this tension, I just had to be under immense stress myself. Well, I did it. I didn't feel too good at the end of it, I must say. So above any sort of technical, historical problem that I faced in writing this, the biggest was actually the emotional challenge of finishing the story, knowing the story was going. I was leaving this trilogy behind that I'd sort of made 10 years ago. And I'd also sort of. It's like, what's. There's a botanical reference. I'm Searching for, as I'm talking. It's about, like, where you force flowers to come up early or whatever. I don't know what I'm talking about. Anyway, nearly did myself some psychological damage writing this book. So if you like it, know. Just know what I put into this and be grateful.

[Alice Loxton]

Well, I'm very. I mean, as someone who writes nonfiction, I always think it's a great gift with nonfiction because history is just full of so many amazing stories that all you have to do really is just kind of tell what has already been there. But I feel like writing fiction is a complete. That. That really terrifies me, coming, I suppose, to having to create the stories themselves. So I. I do admire it a lot.

[Dan Jones]

But that's why historical fiction's the cheat's way out.

[Alice Loxton]

I don't know.

[Dan Jones]

I mean, you buy. You sort of like you buy a starter kit so you've got some historical setting and events. Otherwise you just have like, you'd be writing aliens on the.

[Alice Loxton]

Well, maybe that's. Well, I was about to ask you what's coming next, Dan, and maybe that's. Is that what we can expect in years to come? I mean, this is so. This trilogy. This is. First of all, I want to know, you know, the writing a trilogy. How do you think that, you know, why did you go for that approach and not, I suppose, more books? It could have been more than three, could have been less. And I mean, do you think that's a natural kind of framework for a kind of epic story like this? And is this the end, or will there be more? Can we expect more from this in years to come?

[Dan Jones]

Do you ever see the film Flash Gordon? It was probably born, you know, the end of Flash Gordon. Right. Is the end. Question, why a trilogy? Thought I'd get more money, I guess. No, why a trilogy? Well, a trilogy, because standalone, you know, I wanted to build a franchise of a sort, you know, in terms of publishing terms. I wanted this to be a bigger project than a one and done.

[Alice Loxton]

You must feel there's like a breathing space, though. It almost builds momentum over the length of time that gaps within it, I suppose, Yes.

[Dan Jones]

I mean, I wrote the first two back to. Back then, had a year where I published Henry V and then came back to this.

[Alice Loxton]

So industrious.

[Dan Jones]

Thank you so much. There's good and bad things about writing a trilogy. The good thing is that you've got space to let the characters grow and expand. And in some ways it functions in a series, in some ways it doesn't. And I have. I Mean, I haven't left the door open, but I've left it unlocked. Or at least no, I've locked the door, but the key is not very well hidden. It's under a flower pot that's next to the door. And if you want to sort of reopen the door, all you got to do is pick up the flower pot and the key is there, if that analogy makes any sense. I'm trying not to spoil the end of the book, but there is, on the other hand, a difference, an important difference between a trilogy and a series. You know, a sort of returning character. I mean, I know Bernard Cornwall's Ugtread is going on a journey and trying to achieve things over the course of these stories, but really you could sort of pick any of any one of those up and have a. It's a franchise. It's like. I mean, I love the Jack Reacher, the Lee Childs, Jack Reacher books, the franchise. You can read them in the order they occur in Reacher's life. You can read them in the order that Lee wrote them, or you can just pick one up and have a great time. And I think that those are two very different types of fiction. And this book, it's an ensemble cast, it is a sequential story. It's not a sort of return, you know, it's not a kind of, oh, pick them up in any order. So it's more like one novel split into three in that sense. I don't know what I'm going to do next in fiction. I have a bunch of ideas. I am quite attracted by this returning franchise, you know, medieval Jack Reacher, as it were. But at the moment I'm writing a non fiction book about castles which is coming out to next.

[Alice Loxton]

How thrilling. Well, we look forward to it. Whatever, whatever it will be, in whatever form. Thank you so much, Dan. It's been fascinating to hear these. A little snippet of your. Your latest book, Lionheart, and we're going to open up the questions to the floor. So if anyone has got any questions, we're going to have two mics. Please keep your questions short and sharp so that we can get through so.

[Dan Jones]

I can ramble on and please don't take my time.

[Alice Loxton]

So can we see at the back here? I think there's a man over here on the left.

[Dan Jones]

Hello there. My name's Geoff Elsam, I live in Haven, I live in Essex. My question's really just two short questions. Firstly, I wondered why you chose to name one of your main characters Romford after our major town centre. Very near to where I live. And secondly, I thought the character of the Scotsman was the best character in both the books. Fantastic character. He. Is he dead or will he return? My wife's family are from Dagenham and Romford spent. I've been Romford a lot. That'll do. No, I don't know where the name. The name just sort of appeared. I mean, it just. I like the name Rom. Just, you know, that's what he's called. I think he was from Romford. Maybe at some point in my mind he didn't end up being. Anyway, and I take the fifth on the second question. Thanks very much. I wondered if you could say a bit more about Romford, because I think he's a man, not the place. He's a fascinating character. The substance abuse, the ambiguous sexuality, the sort of childhood trauma. Where did he come from and where's he going? I don't know where he came from. Well, where did he come from originally? I think I wanted a story in which there was a young character who was a tag along who just sort of joined at the last minute. And I hadn't really figured much else out about him other than that. That bare fact. And I remember it was probably about a quarter of the way, and maybe not even that through Essex Dogs. He gets up in the night and he wanders off to do something. And this was the experience where it was like, wow, he's just. That's not what I expected him to do. He, like, breaks into an apothecary shop and goes and gets like, super high. I'm like, what are you doing? And then suddenly I was like, wow, that's actually great, because a little bit of my brain, as I was writing the first book and it stayed throughout the trilogy was like, you know, a lot of my reference, a whole section of my references were modern American war films. Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and so on and so forth. And so I guess that, like the tear sheet that had Vietnam kind of movies on it, there's just always a junkie, isn't there? And so maybe that was a part of it.

[Mia Sorrenti]

No.

[Dan Jones]

But I was quite interested, again, in this experimental kind of spirit that I was talking about earlier with Alice, of putting a medieval skin on characters who we might be more familiar with from modern war storytelling and. And finding if it's credible, finding how it works, seeing what happens when you do it. And then Romford just develops. In one word, I would describe his character as fiend. He's just a fiend for anything. And I know a few fiends. Some of my best friends are fiends. I like the fiend mentality and I like sort of seeding that in Romford, but with this kind of innocence to him as well, that makes him quite vulnerable. And you just desperately want to put your arm around him. I mean, a lot of that he just made for himself, even in this book. And I don't think it's too great a spoiler to say he's cleaned his act up. He's still a fiend in having cleaned his act up. Does anyone know what I mean by the phrase straight edge? He's gone like straight edge. That's a form of being a fiend. That's being a fiend about sobriety. So I'm very fond of him.

[Alice Loxton]

Next question here.

[Advertisement Voice]

Hi. It's not about Romford.

[Alice Loxton]

So I've got two questions, actually.

[Advertisement Voice]

My first one is, what was your favourite book of the three? And then the second question was, when? Not if, but when it's made into TV or film. Who do you imagine playing parts in the story?

[Dan Jones]

I mean, with respect to unanswerable questions, I mean, which is my favorite? It's like my kids. It's just the one that's causing me least bother at any given moment for a long time. It definitely wasn't that. But now this is causing me the least bother because I get to come and talk to all of you about it. And so I love this one the most also. This one's golden, shiny, and I mean, let's not overlook that. And I gotta tell you, I will generally quite confident a character, right? If you say, do you think you could do X thing? I'd give it a go. I watch a bus drive past down the street, right? I'm like, yeah, I could drive that probably. You know, I'd get used to it. I'd be a terrible casting director. I just couldn't do it. So I'll leave that to others.

[Alice Loxton]

Any other questions? Down here in the front left.

[Dan Jones]

Hi, Dan. I'm Jordan. Hey, Jordan. Hi. We came from America to be here with you tonight. One thing I was always curious about, taking out Joanie, who is also one of my favorite characterizations, specifically with the Essex dogs. Did you have a character that you really, really enjoyed writing or was there one that was really challenging to characterize and kind of bring to life. Apologies, as I'm choking here on stage. They are going to be really short answers. Now, William de Boone, the Earl of Northampton, I was very, very fond of generally, if they've got a real foul mouth. I've had fun with them.

[Alice Loxton]

Hi, thanks to the team for a lovely discussion. What are your thoughts, your fears about AI and writing and their creative experience? Experience, because, like, there's been a lot of discussion tonight about emotion and, you know, as adults, I'm sure, Dan, prior to you writing, you know, prior to you being a father, perhaps your writing was a bit different or you had more empathy or understanding. You know, just what. What are your thoughts about, as I said, the creative process and AI. And, you know, I think when you look at AI, it's incredibly impressive what it can create. You know, you can ask it to write. I've tried all sorts of things. Quite interesting. And you can get it to write about incredibly niche things. And it's pretty impressive. You know, you can pick a year and say, can you create a description of somebody building this. Creating this building in the year like 1290 or something, and in this particular village, in a particular part of England, you know, and it is amazing what it can put together, but it is always. You can always tell it's written by a computer. You can always tell it hasn't quite got that. That shine of somebody writing it. I think it's just. It's just definitely programmed. And I think, you know, AI often is good. It get challenges you. And there's a lot of really good tools that you can use it for. But I feel. I feel like it will never. It will never re. It will never replace brilliant writing, I think. And then the other thing about AI is, of course, you know, if that is something that is going to become prevalent, well, it's only going to mean that coming and seeing people in real life and coming to events live, I think that would be something that people will really definitely enjoy. What do you think, Dan?

[Dan Jones]

I'm probably slightly more pessimistic in one regard than you, which is to say that we are so early in the. In the process of. I mean, these are the foothills. And if you think about the insane improvements in just large language models between, you know, the third and fourth iterations and 40 to 4.5 by the time you get to 5, let alone 6, forget it. I mean, AI is already, particularly in sort of video generation, capable of doing astonishingly amazing things. The writing is going to get better and better and better and better and better and better. What we have to ask is how is. So one of the questions that interests me is how have we got to a place where machines can now write as if they're humans and we Already can't tell the difference. The vast amount of slop writing, I would call it formulaic writing. And by formulaic writing, I don't just mean could it write you a contract? But could it particularly write you, for example, an A level history essay? And definitely a GCSE history essay and probably even an undergraduate history essay. And it could do a very competent job of doing that. What should we take away from that? Well, one of the things we can take away from that is that we have been training human minds for too long to think like and replicate machine thought. And this is most obviously illustrated if you look at the way that GCSE history and English essay writing has done. We've been teaching kids to write like machines, to write algorithmically, to fill in a form. Your GCSE essay has an introduction and has three sentences. And each sentence performs this function, then has three paragraphs, and each paragraph has three sentences, and each sentence fulfills this function. Then you have a conclusion and it does this. Well, that's not a human way of thinking. And it's no wonder that one of the first types of writing a machine proved itself very able to do was that because it's just one replicating the same thing. It's slop thought, it's machine thought. And we know this joke computer says no, it's a sort of staple joke of our society over the last 20, 25 years, is because we have put ourselves deliberately in hock to machine thinking already, and the hybridization of human mind and machine mind is much further advanced than we probably recognize. Well, here might be an opportunity. AI is coming, and it's already come. And it's sweeping through all the different forms of writing that are out there. We need to rediscover in this space. Let's go back from the general to particular the point of difference between human thought and machine thought. Because if humans are to continue to exist as thoughtful beings worth doing this stuff, then we have to put a premium on human creativity, human genius, human inspiration. What if there's weird and unexpected things that we can do that a large language model in particular, which is aggregate and drives towards the mean, would not be able to do? And to think. I mean, this is essentially the storyline, the heart of the storyline of the film Terminator 2. I accept that. But there is deep down, like, this is the deep philosophical question that's going to face all creative people. We are already facing it. What is the point of difference between human intelligence and machine intelligence? And let's lean into it. And Alice, I Totally agree with you. I think that. That on the second part of what you said, that the human be with human thing is already becoming more and more important. We're seeing the value of live events. Thank you, Intelligence Squared. Thank you, every other promoter who puts on events like this because there's a growing appetite, I think, as the limitless vistas of free or close to free or easily available or information, you know, spill out before us, all accessible by the smartphone in your pocket. The one thing that remains at a premium because of its scarcity is that human interaction, interaction between real people. We're not staring at our phones and we're not plugged in to the machine. And that's the thing that we have to lean into and to cherish and to embrace and to understand the worth of it, I believe. Psych. I got an AI to write that.

[Alice Loxton]

Oh, yeah. Thank you for a really interesting conversation. Thinking of the trilogy as a whole, are there any scenes or characters that you really enjoyed writing but just didn't make it into the series? And how hard is it to make that decision?

[Dan Jones]

Yeah, there's tons on the cutting room floor. That's a great question. What got lost? Loads got lost. So, I mean. Well, actually, the interesting bit was the first scene I wrote of the whole Essex Dogs trilogy is actually the first scene in book two, where the Captain's on the bridge in Paris. The whole story was originally going to revolve around him, or rather it was going to flick flak between him in one sort of world and the Essex Dogs in the other. And I got, with book one, quite a way through in trying to juggle these two stories before the whole thing really got on top of me and I was like, I'm trying to write way too complex a novel when I haven't even written a simple novel yet. So I pulled all of the Captain's storyline out of book one and he just exists off page, as it were, and then he reappears. But I love that scene so much. You really shouldn't do that sort of thing, you know? I mean, one of the first bits of advice you get from any truly adept screenwriter or novelist is kill your darlings. You know, like, if you love Paul Abbott. Do you know Paul Abbott who wrote Shameless? The British Shameless? Paul married to a pal of mine, and I used to see him now and again, and I was always interested to sit with Paul and listen to what he thought about writing, because, I mean, probably there or thereabouts from the greatest living British TV writer, but Paul was so obsessive about kill your darlings, kill your darlings that he would take his favorite scene in one of his screenplays and deliberately throw it in the bin just to kind of keep himself on edge about doing this. So I broke that rule. But I loved that scene with the captain on the bridge. And then it sort of drove the whole of the plot of book two in the end. I mean, Joanie did a whole bunch of crazy shit in this book that I just kept writing and then taking out and going, oh, wait for her own vehicle. You know, her own spin off series. Let her do that.

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[Dan Jones]

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[Dan Jones]

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[Alice Loxton]

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[Alice Loxton]

Another question.

[Mia Sorrenti]

Anyone else?

[Alice Loxton]

This lady over here on the left. We've probably got time for about four more questions.

[Mia Sorrenti]

Hi Dan. Hi Ellis. Thank you so much for tonight. Dan, a question to you. Do you feel that you have more responsibility as a fiction writer or a non fiction writer?

[Alice Loxton]

I'll give you my personal example.

[Mia Sorrenti]

When I was 14 I read the.

[Alice Loxton]

Whole series of the brilliant French writer Maurice Durand, the Accursed Kings, the Royamudi and I feel that it shaped my whole perspective on the 14th history of.

[Mia Sorrenti]

14Th century history, both England and France, including the events that you're writing from.

[Alice Loxton]

So I feel like I got everything that I like from there. So over to you.

[Dan Jones]

I think it's pretty clear you have more responsibility in terms of getting it right as a historian. I mean the selling point of historian is this happened. The selling point of novelist is eh.

[Alice Loxton]

Maybe though don't novels and films I think people, there's some amazing stats about people's what shape what most shapes people's perception of the past. And I think movies is the strongest, the most compelling thing. So you're maybe you have a, you know, it leaves a stronger mark the.

[Dan Jones]

Novel maybe so but I still don't think that puts the onus on the filmmaker to obey the rules of the historian. And I think that actually the. Oh God, I'm going to do the rant again. Sorry if anyone came in Bath, but the person who most distorted this in recent years is Hilary Mantel and Hillary Mantell's sort of dogmatic approach vigorously enforced on people who wanted to hear it or didn't that historical fiction had this sort of deep responsibility to be the past and get it completely right. And that basically everybody should write historical fiction like Hilary Mantel wrote historical fiction. Ha ha. Guess what, you can't win the game because I'm her was really annoying and it's sort of and actually quite stifling. And because of the sort of bizarre sack and obeisance that everyone seemed to pay this writer, who I did not think was a bad writer but certainly was sort of overhyped, everyone sort of fallen in this line and as for this stuff about oh, readers don't know, you know, want to get their history from movies or from historical fiction. Well I'm sorry, that's the birds. It's not my responsibility as the creator, to create something that's specifically like a made up story and make it follow the rules of something that's specifically not a made up story just because you can't tell the difference. I mean, it has to be some user responsibility. Sound angrier than I really am, but, you know, like, yeah, I get that people watch Braveheart and think that's how it went down, but like, I don't know how many ways I can tell you it didn't. It's a movie. Do you watch Peppa Pig and think that's what your bacon's made of? I don't know, like, I wish it was. She's annoying.

[Alice Loxton]

Any other questions? Next here in the middle, this chap. Oh, maybe we should have one from this side. This man here in the front. Yep.

[Dan Jones]

Hi there. Just had a quick question on the characters. How are you talking about how the characters get put in a situation and it's. You watch the situation play out. How do you choose your characters? Where does your cast come from? Oh, that's a great question. Yeah. I mean, originally. Well, so, I mean, there's two kind of categories of character. Some are the totally fictional characters and some of them are the real characters. You know, the Edward iii, the sort of Jane, the Fair Maid of Kent or whatever.

[Alice Loxton]

The.

[Dan Jones]

Essex dogs themselves. If I think about the first piece of research, character research I did was I've got loads and loads of sort of Taschen and similar style, big format art history, art books. Right. And I sort of went through like Da Vinci and Jan Van Eyck and sort of roughly. I mean not contemporary, but roughly contemporary 15th century artists where I could find them. A bit of juror as well, straight into the 16th century and pulled faces from the background of like scenes and just magnified them and stuck them on the wall. So they just. They just stared at me for a while. Stared at me. And I let them stare at me. And then I go. Then they. Some of them got names and they got little sort of words attached to them and. Okay. And then some, some of them. So that's. Then they just have built themselves, if you see what I mean. And one or two I mentioned Father, I put a dollop of me local landlord in there, but only, only a dollop. You know, there's one exception in this book. The main Castilian pirate's called Alvaro, Alvaro Montoli. And I've got a friend called Alvaro Montoglu. He's not Castilian, he's Spanish. And he was my Spanish swearing consultant. There's A whole plot line that starts when a character called Rigby in here learn, you know, you know how when you're a kid and you're a dumb kid and you go to a foreign country and someone teaches you, wants to teach you some of that language, and you learn hello, goodbye. And then the worst swearing, like literally the most offensive thing you can say, and you learn that that's the extent of his constitution. And he gets him into all sorts of trouble. But I wanted it to be really bad. Really, really bad. And so Alvaro, bracket him. You remember, I was talking to my friends who I'd bracket as fiend. Alvaro was so good with that that I let the pirate be named after him. That was as close as a real person got into the pirate, the Castilian, whatever. The real, quote, unquote, characters is a slightly different approach. I mean, there are parameters to what you can do with them. And sometimes they're wide. The Black Prince as a kid, for example, big, wide parameters of what you can do with him. Because there's not much attested to his personality as a child, which is why people frequently say, hey, yo, the Black Prince and Essex Dogs. What's that about? I said, well, this is, you know, it does make sense with how the book ends and how we get to the point of why his father would say he has to win his spurs and so on. I was very sort of influenced in many ways in writing those real characters by my favorite work of historical fiction, which, as you may have worked out, is not Wolf hall, but James Ellroy, who might not have worked this bit out. Unless you've heard me, Stan. James Ellroy before, which I have done. James Ellroy. Anyone read American Tabloid by James Ellroy? No one's ever read American Tabloid by James. You got to read American Tabloid by James ellroy, Time magazine's 1995 book of the Year. It's about the Kennedy assassination as seen through the eyes of three kind of grifter bagmen, kind of, you know, very compromised individuals who are one or two rungs below the real power players of the era. Jfk, rfk, Jimmy Hoffa, Carlos Maidana, you know, Howard Hughes. You see all those characters, as it were, from below, seen through these Ward Littell, Pete Bondurant and Kemper Boyd. The names of the main characters and the start of one of Elroy's trilogy, the American Underworld trilogy. I mean, it changed my whole, like, understanding and belief of what historical fiction could do when I read American Tabloid and Then its sequel, Cold 6000 and the Last one, Bloods are over. They're pretty good as well. And so I thought a lot about, or I got a lot of my thinking about those real characters from my reading of Elroy, of creating grotesques. In a way, they're sort of like. They're not the, you know, they're not the sort of. If you think about the front of Lincoln Cathedral and it'll have the sort of saint statues and the kings and they're all very sort of sober and kind of respectful. But then I'm more interested in the gargoyles, you know, the ugly grotesques, the monstrous versions of these characters. And that's what I mean about sort of having a conversation in fiction with history. You know, you take something, you're much more licensed to kind of play around with it.

[Alice Loxton]

Any other questions? I think we've got time for two more. Two more? Yep. Okay. Well, we'll have this man on the left over here first. Yeah.

[Dan Jones]

Slightly broader question, Dan. I've always been amazed at how the French in the three major battles pointed. Creasy, had you always fallen foul of the longbow? I mean, how can they make them say mistake three times? I just wondered on your thoughts on that. And also, what have you got written on your T shirt? The damned punk band. Does it look like something else? Just wanted to know what it was. Well, I mean, Crecy and Agincourt are in one category. Poitiers is slightly in a different category. Crecy, the longbow is sort of still sweeping everything before it. And it is an incredibly powerful weapon on the battlefield, particularly if only one side has it. Well, no, it's still a powerful weapon if both sides have it. I mean, that's the whole story of the wars of the Roses in a way. The French at the Battle of Crecy are outgeneralled by Edward iii. And he takes an unpromising situation. I've walked the battlefield of Crecy with Mike Livingstone, or certainly his proposed battlefield of Crecy with Mike Livingstone. And when he put together the topography, and insofar as we can tell from the accounts, Edward III's plan for the battle, he takes full advantage of the composition of his army, which is heavy on the longbowmen, and takes full advantage of the composition of the French army, which is heavy on the cavalry. And once the French decide to charge, they're in big trouble and it becomes self fulfilling. What's going to happen? Now Agincourt is an interesting case because Agincourt is cosplay. Crecy, if You've ever watched a reality TV show like Big Brother or something on season 16, where all the contestants know the rules of the show and are sort of trying to game the system. That's a bit like how Agincourt stands in relation to Crecy. There is a document, in fact, from the French side. They're like, we know Henry V is going to try and put a Crecy on us. Let's not fall for that. And yet it happens anyway. Agincourt is, I mean, again, a similar story. The French are outgeneralled in a slightly different way. I mean, at Crazy, Philip VI is on the field, and at Agincourt, it would have probably been even worse if Charles VI had been on the field. But there's definitely not a sort of unified leadership at Agincourt. There's a whole bunch of problems at the top of the army. And again, the composition is heavy on the longbowmen for the English, heavy on the cavalry for the French, and the English take full advantage of that. And Henry V, he repeats Crecy and so do the French. The difference, I suppose. Well, or maybe the similarity. Agincourt, even more than at Crecy, everything was riding on this for Henry V, Absolutely everything. You know, the decision not to have gone home after Harfleur to ride what was supposed to be eight days turns into nearly double that North. If he loses Agincourt and goes home, everything is over. The whole Lancastrian project is over. And it comes down a little bit. Does anyone watch a Ryder cup yesterday? The last few holes, if they'd screwed that up, you know, those last two guys for Europe had to take half a point each, otherwise this was going to be the worst thing ever. You know, you just sort of rise to it. But, you know, there comes a point where they don't. It doesn't work anymore. And by 1453, you know, that day is done.

[Alice Loxton]

Final question. This lady in the middle here. Thank you. Hi, Dan. I'm a big fan.

[Dan Jones]

Thank you.

[Alice Loxton]

You mentioned earlier you were writing a book about castles. I wondered if you could talk a little bit more to that and any other castle content. Maybe season three?

[Dan Jones]

No, season three. So this is in lieu. I mean, I've been asked. So the show you're referring to is Secrets of Great British Castles, I think, which are made now, 10, 11 years ago. And it was a great, fun show to make and has had a wonderful afterlife, the most astonishing afterlife for Secrets of Great British Castles. And I really mean that. I remember the first meeting we had with the commissioner at Channel 5 who commissioned it. He'd been sent a very. Not very good. Very, not very good. You see what I mean? A not very good rough cut of the first episode by the producers. And he rang me up and said, oh, my God. Oh, my God, this is career ending for everybody involved. So things turned around from that low point and we made it really good, I think. And it's just had this incredible afterlife, you know, Netflix kept renewing it and it's lived on various different channels and it goes to 40 countries worldwide. And it's just. I still stand by. That show is a nice. It was a nice show. And everyone likes castles, I think so. But over the years, many people have said, we're getting a season three of that. No, there's not going to be a season three. The reason, just so boring why we couldn't do a season three. And it was just a really. It was one of those TV things where it was something a bit to do with finance and a bit to do with somebody wanting to do something else and a blur. And then it just stopped and then it was never going to start again. So those days are gone. So. But because I've sensed an appetite over the years for more, as you put it, castle content, I decided to write a book. And the book is called the Castle, and it blows the frame much wider open than that show did. So it starts in. It's from the Bronze Age to the Nuclear Age. So it starts with Troy, you know, the first sort of. Well, not the first siege of a castle, but this siege of the Citadel of Troy that exists in myth and legend, although you can go and see Schliemann's site of Troy. And it starts with Bronze Age fortifications. Where does the very elemental thing of the castle come from? And then it moves all the way through. Around the world, through all the sort of different kind of castles. At the moment, I'm doing a chapter about Viking ring fortresses, and it's about Harald Bluetooth, you know, unifying Denmark and building these amazing ring fortresses that exist around the. Mostly around the peninsula. And it's going to get all the way through to the nuclear age. Remember the nuclear bunkers from Dover Castle? You know, sort of that. That kind of era of. And it's going to move through all the castles in the world that I'm interested in, and it's going to be a big fat history of the greatest castles. But on top of the castles themselves, I've got this sort of interest in how the castle exists in the imagination. So on the one something Troy is a good example. Here's the DNA of what will one day, thousands of years later become the castle. And it's also this moment that gives birth to, you know, arguably Western literature through Homer and then into Virgil and that kind of sequence. And so. And the same you could say to take the Viking example. Yes, this is an important thing. These amazing castles or their ruins are very important to us. Understanding the, you know, the sort of the building of the early state formation in Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia in, in the Viking age. But it's also about where did the Vikings sit in our imagination? How have they got, how have these people got into our minds in this way? So it's a book that's about the buildings and the imaginative world around them. And I'm having a lot of fun writing it. When I thought of the idea, I was like, ah, that'll be easy, just do a little castle's book. And of course I've made it the most complicated and kind of like thing I've ever written in my life. But I, I'm really, really enjoying it.

[Alice Loxton]

Will that be published?

[Dan Jones]

That's for next autumn, autumn 26. So if you come to this venue or one like it, in about a year's time, you'll hear a much more polished version of that.

[Alice Loxton]

Dan, that sounds absolutely epic. It really does.

[Dan Jones]

Thank you, Alice.

[Alice Loxton]

Ladies and gentlemen, that is all we have time for this evening. Dan, it is such a joy to be here with you on stage. Congratulations on what has been such a wonderful and thrilling trilogy and so many people in this room and around the world have loved the story of the Essex Dog. So congratulations. Well, thank you and yeah, congratulations.

[Dan Jones]

Thank you, thank you. Well, thank you, thank you for being such a wonderful host and doing so many great things for history. And thank you everybody who took a punt on these mad books because genuinely, like my baseline hope was not to bring shame on my family or embarrass myself. And the fact that you're all here and not laughing at me and pointing is just a beautiful thing. So thank you all for coming.

[Alice Loxton]

Well, thank you. Yeah. And thank you everyone for your wonderful questions. Thank you to Intelligence Squared for having us this evening and have a lovely time.

[Mia Sorrenti]

Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by me, Mia Sorrenti and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings. You can become a [e-mail] membership and to join us at future events, why not head to intelligencesquared.com attend to see our full events program.

[Dan Jones]

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