These videos give you an inside look into England's Medieval Festival and introduces some of the people who make it happen.
Interview with Event Director Clive Geisler
Part 1:
Part 2:
Sovereign Radio's interview of Clive Geisler, the Event Director of England's Medieval Festival.
Clive talks about the various elements of the Festival that you can expect to see over the weekend - Skill at Arms, Horses, Grande Parade, Battle for Herstmonceux Castle, 100's of knights and massed archers, medieval shopping and traditional food and drink, kids' kingdom, performances throughout the day.
Battles at Herstmonceux Castle
Fiona Boyle from the Medieval Siege Society (MSS) talks live on Sovereign Radio. Fiona commentates throughout the siege and battle at Herstmonceux Castle giving the public a running commentary and description of what is happening on the battle field. For most participants what they do is a hobby and allows many of them to learn new skills. They are all fully trained in the weapons they use and the fighting on the battle filed is completely unchoreographed. Away from the battle field you can wander around the living history encampments and see how the lived during medieval times, what they cooked, what they wore. You can also see various live demonstration of sewing, blacksmithing, cooking, etc.
Archery
Glennan Carnie explains the English bow as it was used in medieval times.
There will be demonstrations of archery shooting on the battle field over the weekend.
Medieval Armour
Martin Pattison from Hands-on-History talks live on Sovereign Radio. He talks about Medieval armour; how it was worn, what it was made from, how heavy it was and the undergarments they wore to protect themselves from direct hits on the battle field. Men on the battlefield would have stayed in their armour all day and were not able to just step away and have a break to refresh. Men were often found dead on the battle field from heat exhaustion and not injury. Saffron Swanborough wears the armour to try it out and says "it feels like you are underwater and being pulled down."
Skill at Arms Tournament
John Dudeney talks about the skill at arms tournament, the training and the horses.
Falconry
Steven Charlton and Jaggers the Buzzard are interviewed live on Sovereign Radio about the Falconry display at England's Medieval Festival. He talks about the different types of birds that feature in the display; Buzzards, Kestrel, Falcon, Eagle, plus a few more. The training the birds go through has been unchanged for thousands of years, right back to the first known introduction. They are time tested methods that work and ensure that the relationship between man and bird is a good one. The bird has to trust the handler 100% and know that it will not be punished under any circumstances.
The Pardoner's Tale
Jo Foreman talks live on Sovereign Radio about the putting together an adaptation of Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale. In the musician adaptation (translated from Chaucerian English), like the original, 3 brothers plan to kill death and so set off to find 'death'. It ends up with 3 dead people on stage, 2 of them stab each other and one drinks poison... a lovely tale with grim humour! The moral of the tale is 'The root of evil is greed' which shows moral resonances for the modern day.
Interview with Harry Geisler
See England's Medieval Festival from a different perspective.
