Dan Jones
Mention The Crusades and our imagination comes alive with images of chivalry and adventure, of rape and pillage, of wars of civilisation ancient and modern. Yes, The Crusades have come to represent all that; but they are also a series of concrete historical events in which historical persons of all sorts were swept up. Leave it to Netflix-historian Dan Jones to bring those persons to life.
During the Crusades, fought between the late eleventh century and late medieval periods, armies from European Christian states attempted to wrest the Holy Land from Islamic rule, which have left an enduring imprint on relations between the Muslim world and the West.
Dan Jones tells the tale of the Crusades, from the preaching of the First Crusade by Pope Urban II in 1095 to the loss of the last crusader outpost in the Levant in 1302-03 to the taking of Jerusalem from the Fatimids in 1099 to the fall of Acre to the Mamluks in 1291. In this event, historian Erik Goosmann will talk with Dan Jones about this volatile period in history.
About the speakers
Dan Jones is a Cambridge-educated British historian, tv-presenter and writer. He is the author of seven works of Medieval history, among which The Plantagenets – which was made into a television series.
Erik Goosmann is lecturer in history at Utrecht University and specializes in Medieval history. In 2018, he and historian Sven Meeder co-authored a well-received popular history of Frysian king Redbad.
Merlijn Olnon (moderator) is Athenaeum Booksellers’ academic and public relations manager and founding editor of de Nederlandse Boekengids | the Dutch Review of Books. He holds a PhD in Turkish Studies and the history of Ottoman-European relations.
