In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle examines the lyrics of a famous medieval English king
‘Richard the Lionheart’, or Coeur de Lion, has gone down in popular consciousness as one of England’s greatest and noblest kings. His statue stands outside the Houses of Parliament in London. He was viewed as the heroic warrior-king, riding off to the Holy Land to fight in the Crusades. In the early nineteenth century,