WEBVTT

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Welcome to the Delling Pod, with me, James Delling Poll, and I know I always say I'm excited

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about this week's special guest, but before we meet him, let's have a quick word from

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James, J-A-M-E-S, that's me, for 15% off your order. Welcome to the Delling Pod, Chris

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Dobson. Chris, your mission today, one of them anyway, is to be even better than you

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were on the germ warfare pod, which I haven't listened to because I thought it would

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cramp my style, but I know you've been on it, and Jeremy said you were very entertaining.

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And in fact, that is the reason that I even remembered to ask you, because you contacted

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me a while back, and you sent me some very weird and interesting letters,

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the contents of which perhaps we're going to talk about. But just tell us a bit about yourself

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to where everyone's appetite. Okay, formerly a master armourer,

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and master armour to the Royal Armouries in the UK, and that is armour as in suits of armour

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instead of guns. So I used to make and then restore that early armour, anything from

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early Middle Ages up to Baroque 17th century. And my clients were all over the world,

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top line museums, I worked on absolutely the finest stuff there is. And that was there.

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That's a good start.

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Right. Actually, let's not let's not let's not hear about any more with your with your

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self intro, because I think that's an interesting starting point. I mean,

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armour. I've been to places like the Wallace Collection, which has presumably one of the

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better collections of armour in the world. It's not big, but it's very good.

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And of course, I've been to the Tower of London a long time ago. And I'll tell you my frustration,

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which I'm sure you can explain, which is I love armour, but most of the extant

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suits of armour, or do you call them armours? Is that right? A suit of armour is basically an armour.

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Is that the correct term?

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It called it an armour. The period term was harness.

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Okay. But when you were, you're going to tell me, aren't you that the phrase a suit of armour

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is just a kind of, it's not the correct one. Is that right? No, that's just a modern expression.

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Expression. So if you were going to say, I'm going to put on my armour, I'm going to put on my harness,

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would you say? That's what they said at the time. That's that's where the expression dying in harness

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comes from. It doesn't mean a horse that drops dead while it's pulling a cart. It means somebody

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killed on the battlefield. Okay. And presumably actually that would have been quite a that

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would have been the way they wanted to go, wouldn't it? Well, I don't know. Ideally,

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they wouldn't have wanted to go at all. But I don't know, dying in harness, I quite fancied the idea of

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dying in a hunting accident. I mean, I'm obviously I'd rather not die in like, like there's knights

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would rather not die in battle. But I was thinking, if you had to go in a kind of

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well, we've got to go somewhere or other. I just think dying in battle or dying in a

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in a hunting accident is quite a quite a good way to go. You haven't you've had a few of those,

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haven't you? I have. I have. It's really annoying. And I say, so yeah, I mean, this is very close

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to the bone, literally, literally. Yeah. So, but when I was a normie, when I was really into war,

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which I'm not so much now, because I see war as one of the ways that the enemy uses to

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colors, basically. But it doesn't mean I can't still watch Game of Thrones or that Game of

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Thrones spin off the one about the tall Irish knight, whatever his name is, I don't know whether you

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saw it. Quite good. Quite good medieval combat. I'm going to ask you about in a bit. Anyway,

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let me get back to my beef about armor. So you go to these places where these harnesses,

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as I've learned to call them, are. And you look at the dates. And the dates tend to be

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from the period where armor wasn't really being used for battles anymore. It was being used for,

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well, ornament really, that the period I would love to see armor from is from,

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say, Battle of Cressy, so 1346 or Agincourt 1415 or just anything pre 1500 when armor really was

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important. And it doesn't, it virtually doesn't exist, does it? I've found somebody who's even

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shitter at tech than I am. I was sitting there thinking, what is it going to do? Come on,

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no, it is that bad. It is that bad. The annoying thing is I have to go because my bloody proton

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mail account is in a different room. So I have to go down, I can't get it on this computer.

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I have to go downstairs, send you the message. Anyway, you were going to tell me why there is no

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old armor. Right. Well, there is. You're just not looking in the right places.

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But there's not much of it. Yeah. If you want to see armor, you need to go to the really

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important collections. That is, for example, the Imperial Armoury in Vienna. That's the best

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collection of armor in the world. And its sister collection is in Madrid. Although that's, that

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tends to be slightly later stuff. You could go to a museum in Mantua, the Dionysus and Museum

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Francesco Gonzaga. That's the best collection of Italian 15th century armor in the world,

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small, but very, very good. And finally the castle of Kurburg owned by the famous Fontrap

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family. I didn't get that, but I'm hoping that, because it's recorded locally,

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other people will have got. So tell that again, just in case. The castle of where?

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The, owned by the famous Fontrap family of the sound of music fame.

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Really? So, yeah, so the Italian stuff, I imagine would have been actually used in that period where,

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well, it was just sort of constant civil war, wasn't it? In Italy, the sort of

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gulfs and guelphs and the gibbalines and the, whatever, they're a bit earlier,

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they tend to be more late 13th and then 14th century. But Italy was, obviously it's a very new

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country. It was a patchwork quilt of city states before that. It's only about 160 years old.

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So yeah, there was incessant warfare in the peninsula. And they did use what you might

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call homegrown product. Yeah. Yeah, I suppose what I'm saying is, when I go and see a suit of armor,

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or a harness, wearing my normie hat for a moment, I really want to see stuff that's actually been

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used in battle. Because I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? That people actually

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fought in this stuff. And what was it like? And what did it look like? You're going to tell me

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what it looked like. But can I go to those museums you've mentioned? Do they, what's

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the oldest armor they have? It goes back to the classical world. You go to the British

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museum, you'll find ancient Greek and Roman stuff, even an ancient Egyptian armor made of

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crocodile hide, they've gone. But in terms of medieval stage, you'll find the Royal Armouries

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Museum in Leeds. They've got some early helmets and mail. Likewise, Vienna and Kerberg has the

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earliest proper 14th century harness. It dates to the 1390s. And that's got the sort of recognizable

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helmet you might see in or know from manuscripts with the really big pointy, snouty visor called a

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Hound School. So go to Kerberg for that sort of thing. Okay. And so they did actually wear

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this stuff and the stuff you're seeing in museums was used. Because during four decades of restoring

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the stuff, I came across marks and weapons all over pieces, you know, so you can see these

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things have gone through battles. That's exciting. That is exciting. I mean, there is a sort of

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romance and excitement, isn't there about about night's in armor?

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From things we're going to come on to later. I'm like you. When I had my normie head on,

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I used to love the whole romance of the thing. I now look at this stuff very, very differently,

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despite having worked on it and with it for decades. You couldn't pay me to touch it now.

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And people have to this sort of romance idea of shivery nights and people shooting long bows at

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each other. From the moment pretty much plate armor comes into use late 14th century, then into the

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beginning of the 15th century, firearms are starting to come in at the same time. So when

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you see a full what was called a harness of plate, what you you know, the normie name

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would be a suit of armor. You got to remember that that's pretty much contemporary with firearms.

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So on a 15th century battlefield and the 15th century is called by armor scholars the great

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period because it is the when the full plate harness is there before it begins to change

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radically in the 16th century because firearms get much better. Firearms as in hand guns

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and then archibuses and artillery are contemporary with the use of plate armor.

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So I mean, in the later 15th century, for example, in Italian general complained,

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you couldn't see from one side of the battlefield to the other anymore because of all the gun

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smoke. So they're wearing full plate armor when they're being shot at with bullets.

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Right, I hadn't realized that sort of guns were being used

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significantly quite so early. What was that battle? Was it a battle I heard of?

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Well, the way the guy complained, I can't honestly remember, but there's one battle

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called Angiari 14 14 40. And you can there's a beautiful depiction of it on two painted

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Florentine chests called Cassoni by the Angiari master. And you can see guys carrying around

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handguns there. And that's the 14 40s. Right. Okay. And so that presumably

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means that in the wars of the roses, were they using guns then? Yeah. And I'll do another little

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change, change some terminology. People think of things like Bosworth and as you can call as medieval

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battles. And I can test that I call them Renaissance battles. Yeah. Because

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art history scholars followed the first art historian Vasari. And it's generally

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accepted when Vasari was the first person in 1550 to use the term renashita, which is now

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renashimental or renaissance. He was talking about artists in the early 15th century.

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So absolutely contemporary with Agincourt. And so art historians tend to call that period

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Renaissance, whereas military historians are behind them, they're still stuck calling it

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medieval. And there's a sort of joke that the renaissance begins at midnight, December 31st,

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1499. You know, magically you move from one century to the other and it becomes the renaissance.

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Not so. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, of course, as we now both know, as to most of our listeners,

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Chris, that all these terms of fake anyway, because all history is fake, it's all light,

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it's all a scam. On a previous German warfare podcast, I did trash the mudflod thing entirely

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and the missing thousand years. I didn't...

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Can it... Well, if you can do that succinctly, I don't mind you trashing it again. I've never

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been... I've never been swayed by mudflods. Is it bollocks? Absolutely bollocks, yeah.

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Because basically people are being shown basement rooms with little windows at street level to let

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light in and they're being told that's because the ground level has risen massively over the,

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you know, because of the mudflod. So they had to build the houses up again. You can trash that

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very, very simply two ways. One, houses built on hills. Right. If there was a massive mudflod,

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why aren't the houses at the bottom of the hill completely submerged? And the ones at the

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top of the hill do not have the basement seat. It just, it doesn't work. You just have to apply

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common sense. But the other thing is these massive mudflods that are meant to have occurred.

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I live in a town called Fosano, and that's on top of a promontory. We're a rock, we're 100 feet

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above the plain below. And there are medieval buildings down on the plain. You know,

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hello. Why aren't they completely submerged under 100 feet of mud?

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Maybe the mudflods, maybe they passed you by. Maybe they're the mudflods that they

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fought around your town and took all the other ones. I don't know. I wouldn't,

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I wouldn't go to the wall for mudflods. I have to say it's, it's one of my least,

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well, I, not that I've really looked into it, but I, you know, it's one of them,

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that Australian guy who now lives in Mexico, he, he, he quite likes the mudflugs, but

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I haven't, I haven't heard it. It doesn't seem to be common currency.

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And if you've worked with period documents as much as I have,

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I'll spat you crazy. Yeah. If you've worked with period documents like I have,

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you also know the missing thousand year idea is nonsense as well. There's, you know,

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that we've had the thousand year reign of Christ has, has this.

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Is it? Yeah. It's nonsense.

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But if you, I've worked a lot in Florence.

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Yeah. Um, what you mean about sort of, I mean, I, the problem with Fomenco is that he's, he's.

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This is getting tedious now.

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Well, it is. Um, it's, it's not as tedious for us as it is for Andrew who's going to have to edit

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all this. Um, have you got really, no, but I'll tell you something at the point where

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this is happening. My computer is throwing a fit. Um, so I, I think a little demonic interference

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going on here. Well, but yes, I know. I, you mentioned demons, um, in our correspondence.

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I mean, it is odd that because of course, the, the, the devil controls the pat that

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controls the air, um, is a prince of the air, isn't he? Among other things. And, um,

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I think he does, he does like to interfere. I've, I've, I've had this a few times on my podcast,

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particularly on the ones to do with anything, anything to do with supernatural. I get,

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I get interference and it's not just crap internet. Well, you're telling me you've

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got good internet and this is, this is annoying. So we're not even talking about them. We haven't

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even gone on to the, uh, the, the exciting stuff yet. We're just, we're just having an,

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an interesting debate about history. Um, what a discussion. Um, you were saying, uh,

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what were you saying about how, oh, I couldn't hear what you were saying. So I was possibly

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talking over you, but I was, I mess up and make my point while, while we were still able to

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communicate. Um, for Menko, if that's how pronounced it, maybe it's family Enko. I'm,

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I'm learning Russian at the moment. So I'm, I'm, I'm re, really learning how to pronounce

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Russian words. Um, for Menko, family Enko, whatever he talks about, about how, um, dating

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systems are extremely unreliable and, and there's no, there was no sort of cohesive

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form of, of, of date keeping and timekeeping and stuff. So we can't trust the historical record

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yada, yada, yada. But you say generally from your experience, looking at manuscripts,

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we're not missing a thousand years. Is that right?

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That's right. Yeah. And it's, we're back to common sense again. The documents I've worked with

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relate to things like buildings, paintings, events, and we've got those buildings.

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And we've then got things like paintings of those buildings. And if you're telling me

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that as, as some people imply that basically the contents of public archives are all fake,

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or they've been changed, no, if you work with them, you understand how they all interlock

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with each other. One document will reference another. Then you get compilations of documents.

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Then there are the documents reference each other from libraries in different countries.

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And there are lots of private archives as well. So the idea that somebody, you would need an army

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of forgers working constantly to build up this corpus of fake material. And to give you an idea,

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just in Florence, the State Archive and the National Library contain literally tons of documents.

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I mean, literally, that's not an exaggeration. So the, the quantity is vast.

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And I'm not in the history on that. Has it been read a lot of this stuff since it was written?

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Has it, has it been read? No. And if you go to the State Archive in Florence as an example,

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I was expecting to be given microfiche or, you know, maybe even copies. And I was reading wills

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from the 1420s, and they brought me out all the ridges, this huge stack of books to go through.

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So you then have to go through them page by page by page. Because even digitizing these

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documents takes forever. So it's an absolutely huge privilege to go through these things.

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And you find little gems. Here's one for your brother. I was going through some documents relating

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to what are called the Ten of War. That's the counts of the Florentine government who were

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responsible for waging war. And these were the minutes of a meeting from the late 14th century.

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And someone in the margin had doodled a guy. It was, it was a brilliant little drawing

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of a guy badly unshaven with his sort of ass hanging out the back of his hose.

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It was just a brilliant little cartoon. And when I saw it, I thought, who, who else has ever seen

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that since the guy drew it? Just amazing. That is amazing. I'd love to, I'd love to have seen

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that. Oh, before I forget, I wanted to ask you about you, you mentioned in one of your books,

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which we can talk about in a bit, how you found some armor with somebody still in it,

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some bits of, with bits of the, the owner still in it, or?

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No, not me. No, no, well, okay. But yeah, okay. Well, yes.

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No, from the battlefield at Visby, which was fought in Gotland in what is now Denmark,

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in the 14th century. Yes, they've got bits of the owners still in them skulls. Yeah.

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In male hoods. Who was fighting whom at Visby?

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Pass. The Danes were fighting somebody. I don't know, as I've, again, we'll come on to this,

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as I've moved away from this, as it's no longer the, the, you know, the, the all consuming

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interest it once was, mercifully, I'm starting to forget.

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Well, so you've gone off this stuff because basically, a bit like me, you think that war is no longer a

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fun thing. It's an instrument of control and of, of worse.

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No. Well, yeah, yes. But no, you're, you're, you're alluding to something else, aren't you?

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Oh, no, I wasn't trying to establish a link here because I've gone off war because I think war,

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what is it good for? The people who plan and execute wars are not my friends. They're not,

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they're not the friends of people like me and probably you, that's all. That's,

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that's why I'm off war. But you've got another, we can talk about your other

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demonic, dark, masonic evil stuff, whatever you want. I'm just, I'm just exhausting the medieval

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warfare scene first, because I'm, because I'm quite interested in it. So one of the things I

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learned from reading one of your books, the one with black and blue in the title,

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is it called Beaten Black and Blue? Beaten Black and Blue, yeah.

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Um, is that armor was not shiny that actually it was all, it was all elaborately painted?

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No, it's not painted. There were some painted examples, but it is what are called color oxide

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finishes. That means when you are heat, heat treating armor in the forge, or maybe even in

25:09.870 --> 25:18.410
an oven, or bards of sand were also used, very hot sand. Um, an oxide forms on the surface of

25:18.410 --> 25:24.470
the iron or steel, and you can freeze that in place by quenching the metal in oil or water.

25:26.270 --> 25:36.370
So most armor, vast, vast majority of armor, had a dark gray finish. And I used,

25:36.370 --> 25:43.050
um, my interest in art. I was seeing in paintings, which I originally used as reference for

25:43.050 --> 25:49.850
armors, for reconstructing how they should look at given periods. Um, you see color finishes

25:49.850 --> 25:56.550
in paintings. You see sometimes bright blue, sometimes dark blue, gray, black, and even

25:56.550 --> 26:02.170
purple. And I was seeing that in paintings and a lot of armor enthusiasts just say,

26:02.170 --> 26:09.070
well that's just how they depicted polished steel. But then if you look at other paintings,

26:09.250 --> 26:16.130
you see people in the same painting with different colored armors. So that can't be true. Also,

26:16.290 --> 26:20.930
the argument given is that the, the paint is discolored over time and they were, what looks

26:20.930 --> 26:28.010
black now was originally a very bright, what's called white armor. And no, no, because you see

26:28.010 --> 26:33.450
these different colors within the same painting and sometimes different colors of different parts

26:33.450 --> 26:40.270
of armor on the same person. Now what I then did was when I was working on armor and taking it

26:40.270 --> 26:45.230
apart and restoring it, if you remove a rivet, you will find underneath the head of the rivet

26:45.230 --> 26:52.450
a little halo of the original color surface finish. And I began to find the same colors

26:52.450 --> 26:59.150
I was seeing in paintings to dark gray most of the time, but also pale blue,

26:59.310 --> 27:05.370
purple, dark blue. And then I put that together with period documents because there are period

27:05.370 --> 27:11.610
documents that actually describe these color finishes. And one from the 17th century by a guy

27:11.610 --> 27:17.310
called Gervais Marcum actually states specifically that if they're finished like that, they will

27:17.310 --> 27:25.250
keep the longer from rust. So it was, I mean, it's weatherproofing for the, for the vast majority,

27:25.510 --> 27:30.210
it's simply weatherproofing. Can you imagine, imagine going out on the battlefield now in a

27:30.210 --> 27:38.190
polished tank? Well, you dazzle, you dazzle the enemy into, into surrender, maybe into,

27:38.210 --> 27:43.970
into fear or you'd impress them with your majesty. Well, there were, I mean,

27:44.610 --> 27:50.490
white armor did, yeah, possibly white armor did exist. There's no doubt it did. And

27:51.050 --> 27:57.650
there are references to white armor in archives. So we know it existed. But what I did was I went

27:57.650 --> 28:02.630
back through period documents starting in the 17th century. And the vast majority of armor

28:02.630 --> 28:08.090
that actually survives dates from the civil war period 30 years war period in 17th century.

28:08.650 --> 28:14.290
And I just went back and back and back through documents right back into the 14th century.

28:14.830 --> 28:20.530
And you find the mentions of white armor just get, you'd expect them to get more,

28:20.770 --> 28:25.670
you'd expect the quantity mentioned in an arsenal to go up and up and up. And in fact,

28:25.730 --> 28:33.650
it goes down. And to the point where in some periods it is vanishingly, it's just not there.

28:34.370 --> 28:41.170
For example, a document from 1478 from the castle of Pavia outside it's in Milanese territory.

28:41.950 --> 28:46.870
And the Milanese were the big armor producers. That was the center of the European industry.

28:47.590 --> 28:54.470
And out of something like 2,700 pieces or pieces of armor or whole

28:54.470 --> 29:02.710
armors. There's some white armor for horses, a few pieces, but there is one white helmet

29:03.420 --> 29:10.030
out of about 2,700 pieces. That's it. And by white do you mean shining armor?

29:11.350 --> 29:17.290
Polished, yeah. Polished. And what's interesting is when you go through archives,

29:18.250 --> 29:26.010
what's really obvious is you get mentions of purple armor, blue armor, and black armor.

29:26.690 --> 29:32.830
And then these mentions of white armor. And then you get the vast majority on nondescript.

29:33.650 --> 29:39.670
So what that tells you is the notary who was drawing up the document understood there was

29:39.670 --> 29:45.650
a standard finish that he didn't actually have to describe. It would be like an inventory of

29:45.650 --> 29:51.070
Ford Model T's. You don't have to list the ones that are black because they were almost always black.

29:51.590 --> 29:58.150
You would only list a white one or a red one. See, and that's what these documents do.

29:59.250 --> 30:06.870
So that standard finish was a color called russet, russet gray. It doesn't mean red, it means gray.

30:07.590 --> 30:12.430
Okay, but there was a, there was a black knight like in Monty Python.

30:13.710 --> 30:15.370
Oh, they did a black armor, yeah.

30:16.610 --> 30:23.450
And do you reckon they did it because it was kind of like Captain Black and Captain Scarlet, you know?

30:25.910 --> 30:33.910
Well, we know on one occasion it was definitely done as a sign of mourning

30:34.610 --> 30:42.070
because when Henry V died, the knights who rode along beside the catapult carrying the body

30:42.430 --> 30:45.290
are recorded as all wearing black armor.

30:46.990 --> 30:51.350
And how much would this kit of cost in modern terms?

30:55.170 --> 31:01.710
Right. Well, depends on the level of quality. You had everything from, if we compare it to a car,

31:02.150 --> 31:05.690
you had everything from the beaten up fiat panda with one door missing

31:06.440 --> 31:09.370
right the way up to the, right the way up to a Maserati.

31:09.850 --> 31:14.410
And the expensive stuff was expensive, very, very expensive.

31:15.690 --> 31:25.410
And this, in terms of warfare in history, there was a military industrial complex already,

31:25.930 --> 31:30.630
certainly regarding plate armor in the 14th century. If you look at a city like Milan,

31:31.290 --> 31:38.790
that basically was one vast munitions plant. You had specialist makers of armor, of bows,

31:39.050 --> 31:46.010
of crossbows, even of spurs, lances, saddles, you name it. And they churned out thousands

31:46.010 --> 31:52.150
of armors per year, absolutely thousands. And how much of an advantage did it give you

31:52.150 --> 31:56.930
having the Maserati armor rather than the fiat panda armor?

32:01.450 --> 32:06.990
Yeah. Well, first off, let's, let's, I don't know, let's go from the, what can we say?

32:07.830 --> 32:14.190
Let's go from the Range Rover level, something like that. The decent plate harness did work.

32:14.790 --> 32:20.010
It did stop weapons because you've got those examples I mentioned where I found

32:20.010 --> 32:25.890
marks and weapons all over armors. But also there was something called armor of proof.

32:26.510 --> 32:32.610
It was proved by being shot at using the most powerful ballistic weapons they had from about 30

32:32.610 --> 32:39.510
paces. So in the 15th century, the surviving pieces, you find marks from crossbow bolts on them.

32:39.910 --> 32:43.390
That's not necessarily because they've been in action, it's because they've been proved.

32:44.710 --> 32:51.090
And then later, on 16th and 17th century armor, they were shot at with guns. And they left

32:51.090 --> 32:55.790
the marks from the bullets on the surface of the armor, just to show it had worked.

32:55.990 --> 33:00.410
Yeah. So, sorry, Caroline.

33:01.850 --> 33:07.270
No, it's good to say. But it had to work. It was expensive. These are professional warriors.

33:07.910 --> 33:11.670
And they're not going to lumber around the battlefield in something which is going to be

33:11.670 --> 33:15.590
too heavy. It's going to slow them down. It's going to stop them fighting. And if it

33:15.590 --> 33:19.090
doesn't stop projectiles or aged weapons, what on earth is the point in having it?

33:20.290 --> 33:28.230
So it did work. Yes. I can see that. It's actually a bit like tanks,

33:28.330 --> 33:34.730
isn't it? That you want the armor thick enough to be able to protect you from an 88 ideally.

33:35.390 --> 33:39.750
But at the same time, you don't want your tank to be weighed down and sink in the bog

33:39.750 --> 33:45.110
or not be able to go very far because the engine burns out or there's not enough fuel

33:45.110 --> 33:51.170
like the Tiger tank had all the time. So, yeah, it must have been similar. You don't want armor

33:53.090 --> 34:00.670
so cumbersome that you can't fight. No. And I mean, armor is always a trade-off.

34:01.170 --> 34:06.810
It's always got to be a compromise between mobility and protection. Always. Yes.

34:07.250 --> 34:13.510
But to give you an idea of how flexible it was, we've got this idea of knights being

34:13.510 --> 34:19.610
craned into the saddle, which is absolute bollocks. In fact, they were expected to be able to vault

34:19.610 --> 34:24.150
into the saddle without using their stirrups. And you ride.

34:28.130 --> 34:32.210
Okay. Now imagine, now you're used to English hunting saddles.

34:32.610 --> 34:38.530
Yes. Now imagine a saddle, which is more like an armchair with a built up at the front,

34:38.530 --> 34:44.270
back with a pommel and cantal set by American in place. Even higher than that.

34:45.450 --> 34:50.810
And so they were expected to be able to vault into the saddle over a cantal like that.

34:51.050 --> 34:57.150
Over a cantal. And their horses were called destrias, weren't they? Is that how you pronounce it?

34:57.330 --> 35:02.730
Destria. Destria is a war horse. So how many hounds would they be? How big?

35:03.370 --> 35:09.690
They'd be like big hunters, but they'd have short backs. Because you know the condition saddleback.

35:10.030 --> 35:15.370
If a horse has a long back, it gives over time. Yes. Right. Well, they wanted to avoid that.

35:15.590 --> 35:21.510
So they bred horses, which had short spines. So they're very compact animals.

35:22.210 --> 35:28.190
And very strong and fast. I apologize to listeners who aren't as interested in this

35:28.190 --> 35:32.050
horse saddle, but as I am. But I think this is really, really interesting. So I'm going to

35:32.050 --> 35:37.730
ask some more questions. Because I don't think, do people realize how difficult it is to

35:37.730 --> 35:42.210
vault onto a horse? I mean, when you're out hunting, for example, and you need to have,

35:42.290 --> 35:45.870
you're bursting for a pee. It's one of the great challenges when you're hunting,

35:45.930 --> 35:50.050
because you're in the saddle for several hours and you've got to decide,

35:50.590 --> 35:55.570
am I going to not drink anything apart from booze? Or am I going to get

35:55.570 --> 36:00.250
parched? Or am I going to have the risk of having to get off and have a pee? And you don't want to,

36:00.310 --> 36:04.630
because you get left behind and you can't get back on the horse. Particularly if it's,

36:05.210 --> 36:11.050
I mean, some of the bigger hunters are about 18 hands. So that would be about the same

36:11.050 --> 36:18.070
height as a destria, same size. Somewhere 16 to 18 hands. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well,

36:18.090 --> 36:22.410
16 hands you get on fairly easily. But 18 hands is very, very hard without somebody

36:22.410 --> 36:27.970
giving you a leg up or standing on a, on a five bar gate or something. And if you've got a,

36:28.110 --> 36:34.750
if you've got a vault over how many, many extra inches of the, what's the, the pommel thing called

36:34.750 --> 36:41.470
the, the camera would be about, you're talking about, oh, I don't know, 10 inches.

36:42.290 --> 36:48.170
So these nights, it goes without saying would have been young men mostly, and super fit.

36:48.170 --> 36:51.510
I mean, they did little else but train for this kind of stuff. Is that right?

36:51.890 --> 36:58.470
Yep. And also they were expected to be able to, without their helmet on, they were expected

36:58.470 --> 37:06.790
to be able to turn a cartwheel in their armor. Just to show, right? No. Yes. And also,

37:06.950 --> 37:11.390
also while we're on the subject, they trained, yeah, and they were trained in

37:11.390 --> 37:16.110
martial arts as well. Again, they didn't lumber around just walloping each other with

37:16.110 --> 37:22.410
big, heavy swords. We know there were, there, there are surviving fencing manuals. The most

37:22.410 --> 37:29.050
famous is called the flower of battle by a fellow called Fiori de Libri, who lived in the north

37:29.050 --> 37:34.950
of Italy, late 14th, early 15th century, and several copies of the flower of battle survive.

37:35.530 --> 37:42.150
And they're just like oriental martial arts. They show you it's everything from grappling,

37:42.150 --> 37:46.750
wrestling, unarmed, then combat with the dagger, then combat with the sword,

37:47.030 --> 37:52.390
then combat with staff weapons, then mounted combat. So when you say they trained to do this,

37:52.530 --> 38:02.730
they really did. Absolutely. And so we think that you talk about the 20-somethings today.

38:03.490 --> 38:07.570
They think that they basically invented fitness culture. They think that their generation has

38:07.570 --> 38:12.950
access to this understanding about physical exercise, which no generation before was understood because

38:12.950 --> 38:21.110
they didn't have access to all these, the kind of technology and science that modern scientific

38:21.110 --> 38:29.370
training has given us. But I imagine that their fitness has nothing to what these young men from

38:29.370 --> 38:44.710
the 14th century. And also... Global warming is a massive con. There is no evidence whatsoever

38:45.510 --> 38:51.930
that man-made climate change is a problem that is going to kill us, that we need to amend our

38:51.930 --> 38:57.410
lifestyle in order to deal with it. It's a non-existent problem. But how do you explain

38:57.410 --> 39:05.630
this stuff to your normie friends? Well, I've just brought out the revised edition of my 2012

39:05.630 --> 39:13.370
classic book, Watermelons, which captures the story of how some really nasty people

39:13.370 --> 39:20.910
decided to invent the global warming scare in order to fleece you, to take away your freedoms,

39:20.910 --> 39:28.010
to take away your land. It's a shocking story. I wrote it, as I say, well, 2011 actually,

39:28.030 --> 39:37.050
the first edition came out. And it's a snapshot of a particular era. The era when the people

39:37.050 --> 39:42.950
behind the climate change scan got caught red-handed, tinkering with the data,

39:43.410 --> 39:49.930
torturing till it screamed in a scandal that I helped christen Climategate. So I give you the

39:49.930 --> 39:55.890
background to the sculled jugglery that went on in these seats of learning where these supposed

39:55.890 --> 40:03.290
experts were informing us, we've got to act now. I rumbled their scan. I then asked the question,

40:03.390 --> 40:11.650
okay, if it is a scan, who's doing this and why? It's a good story. I've kept the original

40:11.650 --> 40:18.170
book pretty much as is, but I've written two new chapters, one at the beginning and one at

40:18.170 --> 40:24.630
the end, explaining how it's even worse than we thought. I think it's a good, I think it still

40:24.630 --> 40:29.690
stands out. I think it's a good read. Obviously, I'm biased, but I'd recommend it. You can buy it

40:29.690 --> 40:36.570
from JamesDellingPoll.co.uk forward slash shop. You'll probably find that, just go to my website

40:36.570 --> 40:44.170
and look for it, JamesDellingPoll.co.uk. And I hope it helps keep you informed and gives you

40:44.170 --> 40:50.910
the material you need to bring around all those people who are still persuaded that, oh, it's a

40:50.910 --> 40:56.750
disaster, we must amend our ways and appease the gods, appease Mother God. Merry day. It's a scan.

41:00.990 --> 41:06.830
Their fitness has nothing to what these young men from the 14th century.

41:07.590 --> 41:18.870
And also, I mean, this would set them up for life for a good constitution. There's a famous

41:19.630 --> 41:27.610
English mercenary called Sir John Hawkewood. Yes. Okay. And he came from Suffolk, no, Essex Boy,

41:28.090 --> 41:34.970
just on the border and near where I used to live. And he won his last battle fighting in the

41:34.970 --> 41:41.170
front rank. Again, my memory is going to stretch. He was either 72 or 74. And he was still fighting

41:41.170 --> 41:49.370
in the front rank. And I bet he was shagging as well, like a shagger. He must have been a tough

41:49.370 --> 41:54.250
bastard. Really? But he must have been a bastard as well. I mean, was he with the white company

41:54.250 --> 42:00.990
or something? There we go. Now, briefly, I'll touch on that. It takes us back to white armor.

42:00.990 --> 42:07.010
The idea was Arthur Conan Doyle came up with the idea in his book that they were called the

42:07.010 --> 42:12.870
white company because they had polished white armor. No. The period description of them by

42:12.870 --> 42:20.650
a chap called Villani says they had bright armor. And that when they came in from their raids,

42:21.450 --> 42:28.170
or combat, that their squires would get the armor immediately and clean it. So it would

42:28.170 --> 42:37.910
remain this bright. And as you said, it was done to fill the enemy with fear and awe when they saw

42:37.910 --> 42:42.790
this glittering armor. But that doesn't mean to say it was white. I think it was pale blue.

42:43.810 --> 42:46.670
So it would shine like a mirror in the sun, but it just wouldn't be white.

42:48.250 --> 42:57.090
Would I be right in thinking that you didn't advance in the world of chivalry by being nice?

42:57.090 --> 43:01.350
These were nasty pieces of work. They were thugs. Yes, absolutely.

43:01.970 --> 43:05.070
So Hortz would have gone around raping people and just killing?

43:05.790 --> 43:12.970
And not personally. I don't think so. He certainly, there was a siege he was involved in where the

43:14.030 --> 43:18.350
townspeople got slaughtered. And he stopped working for the church after that. And it's

43:18.350 --> 43:27.070
been suggested that even that was too much to stomach for him. And he didn't want to

43:27.070 --> 43:31.370
was responsible for the massacre. He was fighting, he was the commander,

43:31.910 --> 43:36.130
fighting for the church that seized Chizena. I think it was the siege of Chizena.

43:37.130 --> 43:45.590
And one of the problems with medieval Renaissance warfare is when a siege is a closed siege, when

43:45.590 --> 43:52.170
you seal off a town, then there are certain customs or were certain customs that if you

43:52.730 --> 43:58.290
refused to surrender and the enemy then fought their way in, if they got in, you couldn't really

43:58.290 --> 44:04.190
expect to be spared. I mean, yes, some people were, but it was better to come to terms with the

44:04.190 --> 44:08.490
enemy while they were still outside your gates, because you weren't going to be able to negotiate

44:08.490 --> 44:13.630
with them once they fought their way in. And Chizena, if my memory serves correctly,

44:13.730 --> 44:18.270
was a particularly bad example. They got in and they killed a huge number.

44:19.150 --> 44:26.650
Right. Okay. Was, on the battlefield, was

44:27.730 --> 44:33.010
chivalry a myth or did it actually happen? Was the sort of honor in the battlefield?

44:33.790 --> 44:38.750
Yes and no. You did get people calling each other out for personal combat. Yes, that happened.

44:39.370 --> 44:47.130
But equally, you got, you know, people were being murdered. I mean,

44:47.210 --> 44:52.210
sounds odd to say murdered on the battlefield, but instead of sort of fighting sort of face on,

44:53.910 --> 44:59.270
people would simply be grabbed, held down and slaughtered, you know, the battlefield

44:59.270 --> 45:07.710
executions. So that's hardly very chivalrous. You mean people would surround a knight on

45:07.710 --> 45:12.370
his horse, pull him off, and then stab him to death kind of thing.

45:12.830 --> 45:18.790
Well, here's a, we can debunk another couple of myths you'll like this. You mentioned Agincourt

45:18.790 --> 45:25.410
earlier. Yeah. Okay. Well, firstly, and I know a lot of Longbow fans out there will not agree with

45:25.410 --> 45:31.670
me, but the English archers did not mow down the French cavalry at Agincourt. They didn't,

45:31.690 --> 45:35.590
the French fought their way right up into the English lines, but they did it on foot

45:35.590 --> 45:41.630
because the ground was completely poached. It had been raining for days. It was just not ground for

45:41.630 --> 45:47.110
a cavalry charge. So what happened was the French formed a large column and attacked the English

45:47.110 --> 45:53.390
lines on foot. And Henry V was in combat himself in the front rank. His brother Gloucester was

45:53.390 --> 45:58.350
knocked down and Henry stood over him and defended him. And he had a crown on his helmet.

45:58.530 --> 46:04.510
And one of the flirts of the crown was cut off by a French battle axe. So that's an example

46:04.510 --> 46:11.390
of really standing in the front rank. But what happened was at a certain point that the

46:11.390 --> 46:16.270
archers were firing into the flanks of this column, and they began to bunch in together.

46:17.030 --> 46:21.730
And then after a while, because they, they, the French men and arms didn't want to fight

46:21.730 --> 46:28.130
English archers. They wanted the honor of the King. So what happened was the archers

46:28.130 --> 46:33.470
after a while just ditched the bows came out, they defended the position with sharpened

46:33.470 --> 46:38.550
stakes. So they ran forward from that, or I don't know, struggled forward through the mud.

46:39.330 --> 46:44.950
And what they did was they had large mallets with them for driving the stakes into the ground

46:44.950 --> 46:50.730
before they sharpened the ends. Okay. So you had groups of English archers would find a French

46:50.730 --> 46:56.030
knight, dodge around him. And sooner or later, somebody would land a blow with one of those

46:56.030 --> 47:01.510
mallets, knock him down. And then they'd stick a dagger in through the visor of the helmet

47:01.510 --> 47:07.150
finishing off that way, or up under up in the armpit. So it's a horrible way to die.

47:07.610 --> 47:13.950
So and in fact, when the French broke at Agincourt, it's thought that they probably that column began

47:13.950 --> 47:19.670
to break from the back, because the men and arms could see down the sides of the column,

47:19.670 --> 47:23.890
and they could see what the English were doing. You know, they didn't want to get

47:23.890 --> 47:28.430
finished off by a bunch of archers in the mud. No. So it actually broke from the back.

47:28.970 --> 47:33.670
For your audience, there is an absolutely brilliant book called The Face of Battle

47:33.670 --> 47:40.710
by Sir John Keegan. And he compares Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme in one book,

47:41.010 --> 47:46.230
as the basic experience of battle. It's absolutely superb. People should buy that and read it.

47:46.550 --> 47:52.170
Keegan, I've read it, actually, a long, long time ago in my worry days. But of course,

47:52.810 --> 48:00.990
you probably know. I mean, I knew John. I didn't know. Yeah, because he worked on the telegraph.

48:01.730 --> 48:08.030
We'd be on very friendly terms. I was forgetting, you're controlled opposition, aren't you?

48:08.310 --> 48:18.390
Yeah. So I used to like John, and he wasn't my go-to because he taught at

48:18.390 --> 48:25.830
Anturst and because he was a handy historian. Whenever I had a question to ask him about what

48:25.830 --> 48:30.150
I remember, I remember, for example, when Saving Private Ryan came out, I said, well,

48:30.850 --> 48:37.410
John, he actually went to the first screening of it. I went to the and I went with him.

48:37.870 --> 48:43.270
And I was asking, you know, is that accurate? Was it was it like that? And he'd give me

48:43.270 --> 48:48.930
whatever. But the problem with John Keegan, I've learned, now I've gone down the rabbit hole,

48:49.110 --> 48:55.630
is that like all of them, he was a court historian. And he was he was propping up official lie narratives.

48:57.290 --> 49:02.310
I mean, inevitably, if he taught it, you don't get to teach at Santerst if you're not,

49:02.530 --> 49:07.370
if you're not massively establishment. So for example, I think in one of his books,

49:08.170 --> 49:14.430
he questions he pooh pooh's the notion that the Americans knew that the Japanese were coming at

49:14.430 --> 49:21.930
Pearl Harbor. I mean, of course they were. And I'm sure, of course, they were aware of it. And

49:21.930 --> 49:29.210
I'm sure he he's never kind of written in any of his books about how the First and Second

49:29.210 --> 49:36.250
World Wars were were planned by an Anglo-American alliance called the Milner Group. And that,

49:36.250 --> 49:43.330
you know, that's the thing. So so I liked him. But he was part of a part of an establishment,

49:43.450 --> 49:47.490
which I now despise because I because I know it to be evil.

49:48.290 --> 49:55.130
Yeah, I understand. Well, if we just knit back to Ashing Corps itself for a moment. And I said

49:55.130 --> 50:01.710
that, you know, there is this myth of the French mowing down the English archers mowing

50:01.710 --> 50:08.330
down the French like medieval machine gunners with their bows. Right. Well, a few years later,

50:08.350 --> 50:12.310
there was another battle, which is rather less known, called the Battle of Veranoi,

50:12.690 --> 50:20.410
fought in Normandy in 1424. And that time, the cavalry who charged the ground was hard.

50:21.090 --> 50:28.590
Okay. And firm going. It was firm going. It was so firm that the English were unable

50:28.590 --> 50:34.870
to drive the stakes in effectively this time. And this time, they found themselves faced by

50:34.870 --> 50:41.550
lombard heavy cavalry. So that means people wearing good armor, well mounted. And the

50:41.550 --> 50:46.390
lombards went through them like a knife through butter. They just rode them down straight through.

50:47.770 --> 50:54.650
That was so good after, because the French must have been itching to get their their

50:54.650 --> 51:03.510
revenge after. I mean, it was a Franco-Scottish army, in fact, but they had a contingent of

51:03.510 --> 51:09.830
Italian heavy cavalry, about 2000 of them. And they knocked them down like nine pins, apparently.

51:10.810 --> 51:19.890
So the idea that the longbow was this super weapon, and the fact that in every English village,

51:20.750 --> 51:26.890
longbow practice was compulsory. And that this dated back to whenever, when was the when

51:26.890 --> 51:35.150
when did the longbow training start? It's where you're talking about, it must have been common

51:35.150 --> 51:39.950
practice before the 14th century. But it's classically known about from the 14th and

51:39.950 --> 51:44.790
early 15th centuries. And the English went up went on using the longbow into the 16th century.

51:44.790 --> 51:50.870
Okay. But it's part of our national myth that this was our super weapon, and that we were uniquely

51:50.870 --> 51:59.130
capable of using it because we had this training. And it was, and you're saying this is all bollocks,

51:59.450 --> 52:05.530
that actually it was just weather conditions in adjunct core that gave us that. Hang on,

52:05.770 --> 52:10.930
Cressy as well, wasn't the longbow effective at Cressy? Longbow was effective at Cressy,

52:10.930 --> 52:17.070
and in the Wars of the Roses, they were effective. What I'm saying is it's not as effective as people

52:17.070 --> 52:21.270
think there are there are bow enthusiasts who think you can put a, you know, that the famous

52:21.270 --> 52:26.090
armor piercing arrowhead called a bodkin, yeah, that you could put that through anything. No,

52:26.130 --> 52:33.370
you couldn't. I've seen quite light armor with a bodkin strike on it, an Italian shoulder

52:33.370 --> 52:41.910
defense. And in fact, crossbows had a had a higher pool rate as in they were, they were stronger bows.

52:43.010 --> 52:49.930
But like early firearms, now what is true is it took a lot of training to fire the longbow

52:50.530 --> 52:56.110
and a lot of physical strength. And that's why in Italy, you have the popularity of the crossbow.

52:56.350 --> 53:01.070
And then when firearms come in, because they're quite inaccurate when they come in,

53:01.070 --> 53:06.370
I mean, anyone can be taught to point what is effectively a metal tube on a wooden stick.

53:07.410 --> 53:13.350
And the enemy and fire a ball out of it. So one of the reasons that crossbows are

53:13.350 --> 53:17.110
used and then firearms come in so readily is because you could be trained to use them

53:17.110 --> 53:23.190
very quickly. And you don't need body strength to do it. But the idea is that

53:26.670 --> 53:35.170
that if you've got a body of men in armor on horses advancing on longbow, well,

53:35.590 --> 53:42.590
towards longbowmen, this idea that that all it would take is a shower of arrows to take

53:42.590 --> 53:47.270
them all out. That's that's nonsense. Yes, nonsense. Yeah. And what about how how protected

53:47.270 --> 53:53.110
with how well protected with the horses? Very well. I thought we'd probably come

53:53.110 --> 54:00.330
back to horses. Of course. Of course. Okay. Early on, they use a lot of hardened leather.

54:01.290 --> 54:07.550
The French term is quiboui, or the Italians called it quaiocotto cooked leather, because heated up.

54:08.030 --> 54:12.470
And it's a form of armor made from, I mean, I also think of as animal glue armor,

54:12.470 --> 54:17.390
because what they would do is they would take partially tanned hides, fully tanned hides,

54:17.490 --> 54:23.790
you can't do this. You take a partially tanned hide and make a sandwich with another piece with

54:24.230 --> 54:29.210
animal glue in the middle and then put it over a mold, a last, like making a pair of shoes,

54:29.810 --> 54:34.870
and you heat it up. So the glue liquefies the leather, the collagen fibers in the leather

54:34.870 --> 54:39.510
tighten up and you wind up with a very light, strong form of armor. But

54:40.150 --> 54:44.250
we know there were people specialized, not just in making leather horse armor,

54:44.790 --> 54:48.130
their Italian armor is specialized in making steel horse armor.

54:49.110 --> 54:56.750
A fellow called Pierre Inochens of the Fianna is a famous example from Milan. And

54:57.350 --> 55:01.870
German armorers, the Helmschmidt family, they armored horses right down to the feet.

55:02.670 --> 55:08.670
They made a leg armor for horses as well. That's very special. You're talking about

55:08.670 --> 55:13.610
the Emperor Maximilian, but some pieces survive. I'm glad the horses were protected because I

55:13.610 --> 55:18.150
always get very upset when the horses get hurt because it's not really their fault that they're,

55:18.290 --> 55:23.070
although they were, gesturers were trained, weren't they, to, to, to act as weapons as well.

55:23.270 --> 55:28.610
They, they were trained to lash out at the, uh. Yes. And bite and kick. And bite. Yes.

55:29.410 --> 55:34.310
That's extraordinary. You wouldn't, you wouldn't want, I mean, the whole idea,

55:34.310 --> 55:38.910
the idea which is true is if you imagine a fully armored man at arms,

55:39.030 --> 55:41.870
he could, they're not necessarily a knight. They were called men at arms. Yeah.

55:41.970 --> 55:48.030
If you have a fully armored man at arms up on a big strong horse and that horse is armored,

55:48.110 --> 55:52.570
that's going to be one hell of an imposing thing. If that's bearing down on you,

55:52.570 --> 55:57.670
with a lance pointed straight at you, coming towards you and you would feel the ground

55:57.670 --> 56:03.010
shake when they charged, that's an imposing thing. Because you could remember that they're

56:03.010 --> 56:09.270
high up as well. They're much higher than infantry. What? I'm not, I'm not just thinking about

56:10.210 --> 56:17.210
battles here, but I'm thinking about jousting. I mean, I've come off a horse a few times

56:17.810 --> 56:23.770
and it's really not pleasant. Me too. You hit the ground with a tremendous thump and

56:25.730 --> 56:34.870
the idea, jousting, I mean, how did they not all die of internal bleeding? I mean, how did

56:34.870 --> 56:39.090
they survive? How can you go jousting and not die almost every time?

56:40.210 --> 56:44.990
Well, they had different types of jousts. They had jousts of war and jousts of peace.

56:45.710 --> 56:50.570
In the jousts of peace, instead of a single point on the lance, you had a sort of

56:50.570 --> 56:55.570
grapple head, three points like that. And the idea is it could get a purchase on the armour,

56:55.710 --> 57:00.730
so I could knock the horse down. I mean, horses did get knocked right over along with their riders

57:00.730 --> 57:06.170
because of the force of the impact. But the idea of the three points means it wouldn't pierce the

57:06.170 --> 57:16.190
armour. But there is an example from the 1430s in Spain called the Pusso Onorosa of Suerodi

57:16.190 --> 57:21.530
Quinones, I think that's the name. And that was fought over several days,

57:23.630 --> 57:28.110
and they stopped eventually when they'd either killed or wounded just about everybody.

57:29.950 --> 57:37.050
And because we have descriptions of the injuries, very precise descriptions because

57:37.050 --> 57:42.550
the heralds who were there to record the score, also documented what went on in the lists.

57:43.230 --> 57:49.510
And so we get this whole load of horrible descriptions of the injuries that people suffered,

57:49.870 --> 57:53.890
and really horrible. You want me to give you some, don't you?

57:55.710 --> 58:06.150
Yeah, okay. Tell me. Well, on Italian or Italian 815th century armour,

58:06.150 --> 58:11.590
there was often underneath the bicep, where the tricep is, the underside of the arm,

58:11.690 --> 58:19.050
or the inside of the upper arm. There was often a slot left open down there. They weren't

58:19.050 --> 58:24.850
what they call fully enclosed cannons. And one guy got lanced right through his arm there.

58:24.850 --> 58:34.810
It's struck him. And the lance broke because they talk about breaking lances.

58:35.630 --> 58:39.070
And I know this is another complete rabbit hole, but hence the name Shakespeare.

58:39.770 --> 58:45.830
Shake breaks beer means breaking a lance. And no, I don't believe he existed either.

58:45.830 --> 58:57.010
Anyway, this guy got hit under the arm, lance broke, and he somehow dismounted and walked towards the

58:57.010 --> 59:02.610
judge's stand with his thing through his arm. And apparently he's basically saying,

59:02.630 --> 59:10.530
no, I'm fine, I'm fine. And then they removed it. And it said that blood shot out of the wounds

59:10.530 --> 59:16.470
like fresh wine from a cask, at which point he fainted, unsurprisingly.

59:19.210 --> 59:25.090
Another guy got a lance point in through the visor of his helmet. It threw up, not the visor,

59:25.210 --> 59:30.170
what's called the sight. It went in between the visor proper and the reinforce over his brow.

59:31.810 --> 59:37.270
And it went straight through one eye, straight into the brain, and his other eyes shot out

59:37.270 --> 59:46.350
because of the pressure. Not very nice. No. Another guy, he got somehow a lance point

59:46.350 --> 59:53.370
went in through the the sight of his helmet and was stuck in his forehead. And again,

59:54.290 --> 01:00:00.110
it was like the black knight in Monty Python. It's just a flesh wound. And he was you saying,

01:00:00.110 --> 01:00:08.710
I'm okay, I'm okay. No, you're not. You got a lance in your head. So, you know, and do you know,

01:00:09.190 --> 01:00:15.710
we talked about Henry the Fifth. Henry the Fifth, at the Battle of Shrewsbury, he got a

01:00:17.130 --> 01:00:24.530
bodkin arrowhead in the face, got in the cheek there. And it was embedded in so far,

01:00:25.090 --> 01:00:32.190
his surgeon had to invent a special tool to screw into the base of the arrowhead to remove it,

01:00:32.230 --> 01:00:39.430
to get it out. So, you know, nicely apparently he left him with a nice scar for the rest of

01:00:39.430 --> 01:00:45.630
his life. They were tough bastards. So, so they would accumulate the most tremendous scars.

01:00:46.480 --> 01:00:54.590
And here's a good example then for you of a real bar steward, this guy called Federico de

01:00:54.590 --> 01:01:01.750
Montefeltero. He was a mercenary commander. He was partly behind the the Patsy conspiracy

01:01:01.750 --> 01:01:07.590
in Florence to wipe out the Medici. He only didn't participate because he got injured falling

01:01:07.590 --> 01:01:13.470
through a wooden floor. But he was around 1450 he was injured in the same way he got a lance

01:01:13.470 --> 01:01:22.770
through the the side of his helmet in a joust. And that blow took out part of the bridge of his nose,

01:01:23.390 --> 01:01:28.330
took out the eye and then took out the orbit that the socket as we're just went bang

01:01:28.330 --> 01:01:36.990
straight through and wait for it. So, he lost the eye. But not only that, because he'd lost

01:01:36.990 --> 01:01:43.830
the eye, he then got surgeons to take out more of the bridge of his nose so he could see a cross.

01:01:47.490 --> 01:01:53.330
And that's why I mean people couldn't look him up online Federico de Montefeltero

01:01:53.330 --> 01:01:58.090
in every portrait after that he's only ever shown from the left hand side.

01:01:59.410 --> 01:02:06.290
But I'm still I'm sure the ladies can see both sides weren't quite so attracted to him.

01:02:06.290 --> 01:02:15.090
Well, so this is horrible. This is horrible. And they were into that Spanish. What were they

01:02:15.090 --> 01:02:22.530
thinking? Why would you have everyone killing each other at a at a kind of a non war type?

01:02:23.810 --> 01:02:28.910
Matter of honor. It was called the pass of honor. They were showing that they were

01:02:28.910 --> 01:02:37.670
chivalrous nights. Yeah. And it does show you that I mean, I've talked about martial arts before.

01:02:38.150 --> 01:02:45.770
And you do get I heard you mentioning Machiavelli on a podcast, I think, some while ago. Yeah. And

01:02:45.770 --> 01:02:51.670
you thought he might have been misjudged in some way. And no, he was a political spin doctor.

01:02:52.150 --> 01:02:57.310
And at the but he describes the battle of Angiari in 1440. He said it went on for four

01:02:57.310 --> 01:03:02.770
hours. And it was only one man killed not because of any honorable wound, but because he fell off

01:03:02.770 --> 01:03:10.450
his horse. And as a result was trampled to death. No, hundreds killed Angiari. Right.

01:03:13.110 --> 01:03:20.330
Yeah. Yeah. Another wrong. And yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um,

01:03:23.470 --> 01:03:28.770
how I was quite you I you presumably haven't seen that that that Game of Thrones spin off

01:03:28.770 --> 01:03:35.290
series a night of the seven kingdoms. I think it's cool. No, I haven't. I don't think I've seen

01:03:35.290 --> 01:03:41.270
any of the Game of Thrones either. The justing scenes are really quite good. Um, and

01:03:42.290 --> 01:03:48.790
they give you a give you a sense of the kind of just the grinding brutality at all. So,

01:03:48.790 --> 01:03:55.490
so what once you unseat your the rider, do you then get off? Do you get off your horse? What's

01:03:55.490 --> 01:04:03.470
the etiquette when you when you've there was a certain number of courses fought, you know,

01:04:03.830 --> 01:04:09.130
either fighting with the lance or then fighting with other weapons. There were there were club

01:04:09.130 --> 01:04:13.790
tournaments where they were a bit like a demolition derby where they had helmets which

01:04:13.790 --> 01:04:18.450
had elaborate crests on them. And the idea was you had to literally smash the crest off

01:04:18.450 --> 01:04:23.470
the other guy's helmet. And they would sometimes fight in teams or individually. And yeah,

01:04:23.470 --> 01:04:29.950
there were also courses fought on foot. There was a tournament 14 Smithfield. And that was a

01:04:29.950 --> 01:04:37.970
that was a grudge match. That wasn't a fun. I can't remember the names of both the combatants.

01:04:38.270 --> 01:04:42.070
It was in the I think it was in the 15th century. And one of them was had the

01:04:42.070 --> 01:04:47.790
fantastic name of the great bastard of Burgundy. And he was fighting an English man at arms.

01:04:48.450 --> 01:04:54.150
What happened was the Englishman got him down on the ground, forced his visor open,

01:04:54.430 --> 01:04:59.530
and there's a nice euphemistic expression for what happened next. He then went on punching

01:04:59.530 --> 01:05:05.370
him in the face with his gauntlet until he was quote unable to continue. So in other words,

01:05:05.410 --> 01:05:12.190
until he smashed his face in, literally. So no, not very gentlemanly. No, not really,

01:05:12.190 --> 01:05:20.130
really not. Could they I mean, how can you fight anywhere with with this narrow

01:05:20.750 --> 01:05:27.030
slit? Yeah, I heard you mentioned on another podcast. Right. Now, obviously, I've,

01:05:27.310 --> 01:05:33.570
I've worn armor myself. And what happens is early on, when armor isn't modeled very well to the

01:05:33.570 --> 01:05:38.230
head, if you think of those what are called Great Helms, those basically look like a bucket

01:05:38.230 --> 01:05:45.130
on your head, the the early ones from the 13th century. It's the front of the helmet is further

01:05:45.130 --> 01:05:50.670
away from the face. So the further away from the eye, the sight of the helmet is the more

01:05:50.670 --> 01:05:56.610
restricted your vision is going to be. So then you had that type of helmet I call the the

01:05:57.270 --> 01:06:01.090
hound skull bassinet with the great piggy faced or pig face bassinet also.

01:06:01.630 --> 01:06:05.830
And although they're becoming shaped and you have this quite conical visor,

01:06:06.510 --> 01:06:10.350
the sights in that visor are still quite a long way away from the eye.

01:06:10.810 --> 01:06:18.010
So that does restrict your vision a great deal. The invention of the Italians was to create

01:06:18.010 --> 01:06:24.190
something called an armette, the little helmet. And what that did was it had a much smaller

01:06:24.190 --> 01:06:29.110
visor called a sparrows beak visor. And the helmet itself was modeled very closely to the head.

01:06:29.330 --> 01:06:34.730
So the site was very, very close to your eyes. And it's a bit like wearing a pair of glasses,

01:06:34.730 --> 01:06:40.130
as I'm doing you your eyes adjust to it. And you can see out of the helmet much more easily.

01:06:40.570 --> 01:06:45.150
Yes. If you're wearing one of those helmets, but it sounds like the common experience was

01:06:45.150 --> 01:06:47.950
was was not that it was just like these

01:06:49.210 --> 01:06:55.790
Well, that was earlier on also people didn't always wear their visors when fighting because

01:06:55.790 --> 01:07:01.390
they're not there. No visors visors were often held on with pins. And so you could

01:07:01.390 --> 01:07:05.030
just remove the two pins and take the visor off and fight without it.

01:07:07.090 --> 01:07:11.090
Yeah. And that's probably how Henry the fifth got his arrow in the face.

01:07:11.910 --> 01:07:17.110
But I think that's what you do, isn't it? Surely you want to be able to see what's going on?

01:07:18.410 --> 01:07:22.510
Well, also commanders, because they had to give orders and hear

01:07:23.050 --> 01:07:29.330
what their subordinates were telling you, they tended to wear open faced helmets as well.

01:07:29.830 --> 01:07:36.450
An Italian type of helmet called a cellata, a salad. And that would either have a completely open

01:07:37.050 --> 01:07:43.870
facial aperture, or it would be a sort of T shape a bit. Some of them even look like what are called

01:07:43.870 --> 01:07:49.090
Greek Corinthian helmets. If people know from Greek vases, those helmets which have got the two eyes

01:07:49.090 --> 01:07:53.110
and then a narrow and a nasal, and then they're open down to the chin.

01:07:53.910 --> 01:07:56.910
They were making helmets like that in the 15th century as well.

01:07:57.630 --> 01:08:02.510
So sometimes it was a calculated risk that they had to have these open faced helmets.

01:08:03.010 --> 01:08:05.110
And it would make them recognizable as well.

01:08:06.690 --> 01:08:11.550
So, so far this has been, this has been the kind of podcast that

01:08:12.090 --> 01:08:16.010
even normally world could appreciate. I mean, it could almost be an episode of

01:08:16.010 --> 01:08:23.130
The Rest is Court History. The Rest is Court History. But, but I was just funny. I had the

01:08:23.130 --> 01:08:27.150
same thought about that podcast myself. Yes, Insert the Word Court.

01:08:27.510 --> 01:08:33.450
Yes. I've just been, I've just been doing, because one of them, one of them's a friend of mine,

01:08:34.230 --> 01:08:38.970
or I haven't seen it for a while, but I kind of think it's great that he's doing so well.

01:08:39.050 --> 01:08:44.650
But at the same time, when you realize that they did an episode on the Titanic,

01:08:45.650 --> 01:08:51.970
six episodes from the Titanic, without one, once mentioning the QGHRs that A was an

01:08:51.970 --> 01:08:58.470
insurance job by JP Morgan, B, the ship that actually sank wasn't the Titanic. It had its

01:08:58.470 --> 01:09:07.990
nameplate changed. C, that Morgan's henchmen used this as an opportunity to bump off that,

01:09:08.340 --> 01:09:14.350
that, what, Aster who, these various, various rivals that he had installed on the ship and

01:09:14.930 --> 01:09:19.350
mysteriously failed to turn up at the docks because he had a pressing engagement, right?

01:09:19.350 --> 01:09:23.390
All the stuff that's really interesting that matters, they didn't mention,

01:09:24.030 --> 01:09:28.990
or at least countenance seriously in these six episodes. And they did an episode of the

01:09:28.990 --> 01:09:39.470
moon landings with, with, with Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks. I mean, and they didn't, they didn't

01:09:39.470 --> 01:09:45.530
mention the fact that we haven't actually been to the moon. So anyway, how did I get there?

01:09:46.020 --> 01:09:51.030
Yeah, we've been, we've been quite normie friendly so far, but do you want to tell me,

01:09:51.070 --> 01:09:56.490
how much do you want to tell me about your demonic, weird shit experiences that,

01:09:56.810 --> 01:10:02.330
and your, your, your, your, the masons and stuff like that?

01:10:03.130 --> 01:10:11.270
Okay, we can lead into it going from normie world. I said, I don't like this

01:10:11.270 --> 01:10:16.430
stuff in meaning arms and armor that I don't, I really don't like it anymore for a reason that

01:10:16.430 --> 01:10:23.250
we're coming to. But also you once interviewed an exorcist, did you not? An American gentleman.

01:10:23.550 --> 01:10:23.850
Yeah.

01:10:24.790 --> 01:10:32.830
Which was fabulous. And he was talking about demonic infestation. He was saying that basically

01:10:32.830 --> 01:10:41.650
places can wind up playing host to these entities. And I found twice in my life that I've

01:10:42.350 --> 01:10:46.610
handled weapons and it's not been a happy experience.

01:10:48.510 --> 01:10:48.950
Really?

01:10:49.710 --> 01:10:57.750
Yeah. One was a Japanese arrowhead, a ceremonial, beautiful Japanese arrowhead. It was cut out,

01:10:57.750 --> 01:11:04.570
had fret work in Japanese kanji characters. And apparently these arrowheads were shot at

01:11:05.310 --> 01:11:10.030
religious festivals as of act of opening or closing. I don't, I can't remember the details of that.

01:11:10.110 --> 01:11:14.070
But anyway, there we are. And I went to see a friend of mine who had the finest collection

01:11:14.070 --> 01:11:21.250
of Japanese armor in Britain, sold now, gone back to Japan. And he was at the room and

01:11:21.250 --> 01:11:26.010
there were a series of arrowheads on the mantle piece over the fireplace. And I saw

01:11:26.010 --> 01:11:31.630
this one. And I thought, Oh, that's lovely. And I picked it up. And it was like I just stuck

01:11:31.630 --> 01:11:37.810
my fingers in the mains. I got a belt off it. Absolutely bang, I had to drop it.

01:11:39.150 --> 01:11:46.550
So there's something attached to that arrowhead. Very, you know, that's that was a hell of a

01:11:46.550 --> 01:11:48.910
shock. So I had this demon attachment.

01:11:49.650 --> 01:11:55.750
Well, it had something attached to it. But there was a very clear example I had once somebody

01:11:55.750 --> 01:12:00.670
showed me an Italian type of dagger called a stiletto. That's a name most people will know.

01:12:01.410 --> 01:12:07.570
Yeah. And they associate them with assassins, but they were carried by all men and soldiers.

01:12:08.370 --> 01:12:13.670
And the guy showed it to me. And this guy was divorced by this stage. And he said,

01:12:13.970 --> 01:12:17.250
I used to keep it by the bed. My wife didn't like it.

01:12:18.000 --> 01:12:27.950
Well, no. And when he handed it to me, it felt revolting. It just felt horrible. And

01:12:28.930 --> 01:12:35.090
when I put it down, I, you know, that feeling like you want to wash your hands. It was just

01:12:35.090 --> 01:12:42.330
absolutely vile what came off that thing. So what I mean, think of the situations these

01:12:42.330 --> 01:12:48.950
objects have been through. They've been used to kill. They've been used in battle. So,

01:12:49.670 --> 01:12:55.750
you know, whatever is getting attached to them, whether people might call it frequency or energy

01:12:55.750 --> 01:13:00.970
or demonic, something can get attached to these objects for sure. And in my experience,

01:13:00.970 --> 01:13:08.110
they also attract a certain not very nice people because of those associations.

01:13:10.190 --> 01:13:17.930
Isn't it weird? This gives me the opportunity to retell my Alistair Crowley's wand story.

01:13:18.010 --> 01:13:18.370
Oh, yes.

01:13:20.030 --> 01:13:27.450
Where I went to the house where the owner has Alistair Crowley's wand, or Alistair Crowley.

01:13:29.850 --> 01:13:35.990
And he said, do you want to hold it? I said, yeah. I mean, I don't want to be able to tell

01:13:35.990 --> 01:13:44.450
people I've held the Alistair Crowley's wand. And I got nothing off it. I mean, I wonder, I wonder

01:13:44.450 --> 01:13:49.310
how it would be now. I wonder what the reaction would be now, whether whether now I'm sort of

01:13:50.050 --> 01:13:56.690
proper Christian and kind of a tune to these things maybe. But I just remember thinking,

01:13:57.030 --> 01:14:05.530
expecting something, some sort of to have some sort of feel some dark power there and be be

01:14:05.530 --> 01:14:08.990
repelled by it. But it didn't really happen. It just felt sort of nothing.

01:14:11.290 --> 01:14:17.470
So well, I got those feelings off those objects while I was still in normie world.

01:14:18.350 --> 01:14:27.650
Although I've always got atmospheres being around some people, you just want to get out

01:14:27.650 --> 01:14:33.430
the room fast. So there was always some level of sensitivity anyway. But while you're just

01:14:33.430 --> 01:14:40.110
mentioning Christianity anyway, thank you to you because you're one of the people responsible

01:14:40.110 --> 01:14:48.510
for white billing me. I always love hearing that. Because I do sometimes feel like I'm a really

01:14:48.510 --> 01:14:57.810
rubbish Christian. And it's nice to feel that I'm serving some useful purpose. So thank you.

01:14:57.810 --> 01:15:02.450
I'm glad to be of service. And over there on top of the wardrobe is my

01:15:02.450 --> 01:15:08.710
Coverdale copy of the Psalms as well. Oh, is it? And that that's specifically down to you. Yeah.

01:15:09.350 --> 01:15:15.290
Yeah, don't don't ask me for my favorite because I'm still working my way in very slowly. But thanks.

01:15:15.670 --> 01:15:22.230
It is given to very few Chris to know the Psalms as well as I now do. I mean, I am approaching

01:15:22.230 --> 01:15:28.390
monk level. Although I exaggerate. I mean, I've still only gone about 35 under my belt. But

01:15:30.930 --> 01:15:39.190
yeah, I mean, if you read them every day, you do get you do you get a working knowledge of them.

01:15:39.290 --> 01:15:44.570
Put it that way. So but but yeah, everyone, I if you can do the Psalms, I recommend the

01:15:44.570 --> 01:15:48.730
Coverdale version. It's better than the KJV. It's the one that gets used in the Book of

01:15:48.730 --> 01:15:59.430
Common Prayer. Do you do you want to tell me about the the guy that puts you off armor forever?

01:16:00.410 --> 01:16:05.050
Well, yeah, what I'll do is I'll just say quickly as a preface to this because I know

01:16:05.050 --> 01:16:10.630
you sometimes ask people what it was that first, you know, precipitated their their fall down

01:16:10.630 --> 01:16:16.110
and tumble down the rabbit hole. My the very, very first beginnings of that were when

01:16:16.110 --> 01:16:22.330
Britain pulled out of Afghanistan. When when the British left Kabul a few years ago,

01:16:22.870 --> 01:16:27.230
I was listening to a radio foreshow called Broadcasting House on Sunday morning.

01:16:27.870 --> 01:16:34.910
Sort of magazine show, which I used to really enjoy. And this was timed to be on on the

01:16:34.910 --> 01:16:40.650
pullout on a Sunday morning. They did a report from the courtyard of a house in Kabul. And

01:16:40.650 --> 01:16:47.610
they were going on about birdsong, how quiet and peaceful it was and wonderful. And lovely. Yeah,

01:16:47.630 --> 01:16:52.290
fine. Yeah, listen to the show. And then later on that day, I was watching Italian TV.

01:16:53.750 --> 01:16:58.450
And the Italian TV covered the stories of the car bombings that took place in Kabul on the

01:16:58.450 --> 01:17:05.950
same day. And Italian TV doesn't spare you. You know, if there's a mafia killing here,

01:17:06.890 --> 01:17:11.510
you see the bullet holes all over the car, you see the blood running down the stretch,

01:17:11.730 --> 01:17:15.410
you know, they don't spare you, not like British TV. And so anyway,

01:17:16.510 --> 01:17:22.730
car bombings, lots of dead. And I thought, Oh, that must have happened after the BBC

01:17:22.730 --> 01:17:28.530
report. I know. And because I still foolishly looked at the BBC News website in those days,

01:17:28.970 --> 01:17:32.990
in the following days, I thought, Oh, it's going to show up, you know, there'll be

01:17:32.990 --> 01:17:40.370
a report on the BBC website. Nothing. Not a thing. So that was the first little chink

01:17:40.900 --> 01:17:46.010
of light where I realized that that was pure propaganda. That Sunday morning radio show

01:17:46.010 --> 01:17:52.190
was just pure propaganda. And then they buried the violence that happened afterwards. So

01:17:53.670 --> 01:18:00.790
then my proper tumble down the rabbit hole. And it precipitated me finding

01:18:01.630 --> 01:18:07.290
things like I stopped listening to BBC radio began listening to talk, talk radio, then talk TV,

01:18:07.490 --> 01:18:11.750
then realized, no, no, no, you know how it is, you keep tumbling further down. Yeah.

01:18:12.750 --> 01:18:18.970
Then then I found you, you were a guest on some show, whatever, I was reading Breitbart.

01:18:19.310 --> 01:18:28.110
So I found you. And then the UK column, German warfare, and these various other,

01:18:28.790 --> 01:18:35.230
you know, a week, if that's the word to use, folk. And when I first, for examples,

01:18:35.390 --> 01:18:41.350
watching videos like yours on Odyssey, I've really had that. Should I even be on this website?

01:18:41.550 --> 01:18:46.610
You know, no, I might wind up on a government list if I look at these things, not knowing that

01:18:46.610 --> 01:18:53.730
I already was so that he really made no difference at all. So tumbling down the rabbit

01:18:53.730 --> 01:18:59.990
hole started because I used to restore armor for people, not just for museums, but for people in

01:18:59.990 --> 01:19:06.570
the antiques trade. And you get a lot of Freemasons in the antiques trade. And why?

01:19:08.490 --> 01:19:16.030
Money, power. That's how that's, that's what draws them always money and power.

01:19:16.390 --> 01:19:20.070
And are they also after kind of stuff with occult significance,

01:19:20.070 --> 01:19:26.910
like grimoires or stuff like that. Not in my experience. I mean, full disclosure,

01:19:27.090 --> 01:19:33.390
I nearly went in myself. I made some swords for them. I got to know some Freemasons around Cambridge

01:19:34.390 --> 01:19:38.410
and places like Sudbury and Claire, because I used to live in East Anglia.

01:19:39.390 --> 01:19:44.570
And after a lifetime of being an outsider, he said, these are nice guys, I thought.

01:19:44.570 --> 01:19:50.090
And I thought, why not? Because they were making it very clear I'd be welcome.

01:19:51.170 --> 01:19:55.990
They don't technically speaking, they don't ask you, you have to ask to go in. And there's a

01:19:55.990 --> 01:20:02.850
karmic thing there going on. Because if you go to them and you say, I wish to go in, then it's

01:20:02.850 --> 01:20:11.030
on you. See? So I've been making some swords for these people, ceremonial swords. And they

01:20:11.030 --> 01:20:17.690
showed me some of their swords. And they've got skulls and crossbones on them. And I was still

01:20:17.690 --> 01:20:23.370
in Normie World then and I thought, it's a bit odd. But you know, but no, these are symbols of death.

01:20:25.190 --> 01:20:32.010
And they certainly are into the occult, of course. I see the way it worked. The way it worked

01:20:32.010 --> 01:20:37.830
is you go in and a lot of people on the low levels are nice guys. And they're, and I'm

01:20:37.830 --> 01:20:42.330
sorry to have to say it, but they are the useful idiots. You know, you go in at the low level,

01:20:42.570 --> 01:20:48.290
and then they gradually start to reveal more and more and more to you. And by the time you start

01:20:48.290 --> 01:20:54.350
to find out just who their great architect is, and it's certainly not God, it's you're in. It's

01:20:54.350 --> 01:21:03.270
too late. And from the masons I met, they just like the party whips in the in the British

01:21:03.270 --> 01:21:08.790
political system. They like someone who's compromised. Because then if they help you out,

01:21:09.170 --> 01:21:15.130
they own you. And as one Mason put it to me very bluntly, he said, when they ask you for help,

01:21:15.290 --> 01:21:25.070
you do not say no. So anyway, my, my going in was stymied by a guy I had been working for

01:21:25.070 --> 01:21:30.750
in the antiques trade. And he treated me so horribly. I was very well paid, but it was

01:21:30.750 --> 01:21:37.330
just unbearable. The rudeness, the manipulation, the mind games. And I just thought, so did no.

01:21:37.710 --> 01:21:41.490
And I didn't tell him to f off. I was quite polite about it. And I said, we're done.

01:21:41.930 --> 01:21:46.550
I'm not I'm not doing this for you anymore. We're done. And I didn't realize he'd already

01:21:46.550 --> 01:21:54.930
been he knew this was coming. And he'd already set me up with a new friend. You know, he was

01:21:54.930 --> 01:21:59.070
he was then having work passed on to me from other people. And basically what started

01:21:59.070 --> 01:22:06.650
then was a steady destruction of my work as a restorer in the trade and not to drive me out

01:22:06.650 --> 01:22:13.370
completely. That's quite important to say. But it was simply to drive away any other clients.

01:22:13.730 --> 01:22:17.770
So there would only be one person for me to go back to if I wanted to have that good

01:22:17.770 --> 01:22:24.570
living that I had before. So that was going on steadily. And I didn't know.

01:22:25.210 --> 01:22:31.510
But I but joining the dots afterwards, the local lodge in Clare will have been keeping tabs on me.

01:22:31.650 --> 01:22:35.710
And it made sense to me of why I got some very funny looks off people who I knew were members

01:22:36.290 --> 01:22:44.450
at the time, local pharmacist, for example. And when I was due to go in, it was firmly blocked.

01:22:46.290 --> 01:22:54.470
And one of the people who wanted me to go in, they did want to help. But the very apologetic

01:22:54.470 --> 01:22:59.950
said to me, I'm sorry, they are too powerful with the words he used. So we're talking about

01:22:59.950 --> 01:23:02.670
it. You were trying to get into what you were trying to get into?

01:23:03.710 --> 01:23:07.670
No, I was I was supposed to go in as a member of to become a Freemason.

01:23:07.950 --> 01:23:14.250
And I was sorry. Yeah. And I literally thank God I didn't because it's not an exaggeration

01:23:14.250 --> 01:23:18.070
to say that that will have saved my soul. But they but they turn you down.

01:23:19.210 --> 01:23:22.450
No, they wanted they wanted me in. What happened was

01:23:23.710 --> 01:23:31.090
my principal antagonist intervened. Yes. And so because these are all different lodges.

01:23:31.870 --> 01:23:36.690
So the local lodging Clare was keeping tabs on me. But these fellas were members of lodges

01:23:36.690 --> 01:23:42.170
in Cambridge and in Sudbury. So that it wasn't until now what really brought this

01:23:42.170 --> 01:23:45.730
out of the woodwork was, and here's another little little nugget for you.

01:23:47.170 --> 01:23:52.970
I lectured to the Freemasons in a lodge in Cambridge one night, they asked me to give

01:23:52.970 --> 01:23:58.330
a lecture about symbolism on of the the Knights of Malta on armor, which I did.

01:23:59.330 --> 01:24:06.990
And some of them were Templars. And yes, they do wear the robes. Yep, they get up in the

01:24:06.990 --> 01:24:14.110
robes. And they were there. And it was when I gave that lecture, the members of the different

01:24:14.110 --> 01:24:19.990
lodges all came together in the same room. And at that point, that sent up a red flag for

01:24:20.510 --> 01:24:25.110
my principal antagonist, because then he knew that other Masons were inviting me to go in

01:24:25.110 --> 01:24:31.690
or wanted me to go in. And at that point, it was firmly blocked. Good. Good. I'm grateful.

01:24:32.370 --> 01:24:36.410
It's unusual incident. Yeah. Incidentally,

01:24:38.430 --> 01:24:44.930
I think you mentioned you had someone who was a family member, perhaps it was amazing. And

01:24:46.170 --> 01:24:51.730
these people, yeah, they can be very nice or very hail and well met. And it's a great boozing

01:24:51.730 --> 01:25:01.670
and eating club at the lower levels. As one guy said to me, you have to forgive us. We're

01:25:01.670 --> 01:25:09.470
but when that block came down, people who I had known as, you know, becoming real friends with them

01:25:09.470 --> 01:25:16.070
that really I thought nice guys. That was it. I had one guy I saw in the local Sainsbury's

01:25:16.070 --> 01:25:21.530
and I went over to I said hi, hi, hi. And he literally turned his back on me physically.

01:25:22.430 --> 01:25:28.310
And I had to stand within each of him saying hello, hello. And then he was incredibly

01:25:28.310 --> 01:25:33.510
embarrassed. Only then would he actually turn and speak to me because he had been told you stay away

01:25:33.510 --> 01:25:39.030
from this person. Dear, dear, so this is the whole point when push comes to shove, they will do as

01:25:39.030 --> 01:25:47.410
they're told. Yeah. So anyway, you won that anyway. So anyway, as time goes on,

01:25:48.890 --> 01:25:54.810
two Masons independently, I'd known for years that something was wrong. Problems with the

01:25:54.810 --> 01:26:02.870
bank problems with my phone company, you name it. And two people independently confirmed that no,

01:26:02.910 --> 01:26:09.330
I wasn't seeing things or imagining things. No, it really was going on. And then that was

01:26:09.330 --> 01:26:18.970
laterally confirmed by a third person Mason from the USA. So fast forward to me moving to Italy

01:26:18.970 --> 01:26:27.810
in 2017, something I'd always wanted to do and had been stymied several times. And I now know who

01:26:27.810 --> 01:26:38.290
was doing the stymie. And once I got here, there was one Mason from a will say a major city near

01:26:38.290 --> 01:26:44.030
here. And I was doing some work for him. And I know he was a Mason, he never told me,

01:26:44.090 --> 01:26:48.050
but I know he was because he used the formula of words to introduce himself to someone

01:26:48.610 --> 01:26:54.190
who I knew here. And the words he used in Italian were exactly the same as the formula

01:26:54.190 --> 01:26:59.650
of words used in English by one of the Masons I knew in the UK. They have certain phrases they

01:26:59.650 --> 01:27:04.850
used to introduce themselves to each other. So they'll they will know if they're dealing with a

01:27:04.850 --> 01:27:16.930
brother, if you if you like. Yes. So he gave me restoration work to do on six armours. And

01:27:17.810 --> 01:27:25.830
this this was by now we're in 2019. And this is an antiques dealer. And he previously treated

01:27:25.830 --> 01:27:33.310
me very well. But from the moment I accepted the commission, every single trick in the book

01:27:33.310 --> 01:27:42.590
came out to screw me around. And I'll try and romp through this quite briefly. But essentially,

01:27:43.510 --> 01:27:48.030
he was trying to put me in a position where I could be blackmailed. Firstly, by paying

01:27:48.030 --> 01:27:53.610
me an awful lot of cash off the books, which I didn't want, but doing it in such a way with

01:27:53.610 --> 01:27:58.670
very large denomination bank notes that can only be paid into banks here 500 euro notes.

01:27:59.110 --> 01:28:06.130
So he was trying to pay me in a way which would be visible. And I once said to him,

01:28:06.310 --> 01:28:10.950
I suppose I could pay the rent with one of these. And he jumped in and said, no, no,

01:28:10.970 --> 01:28:15.710
it's illegal to pay the rent in cash in Italy. No, it isn't. What he was trying to do was

01:28:15.710 --> 01:28:22.010
compromise me by paying me 15,000 euros in cash. And which was the amount for the whole

01:28:22.010 --> 01:28:29.890
commission and not get any invoices for it. And I smelled a rat and so did my accountant.

01:28:30.110 --> 01:28:34.210
I have a guy called, he's a commercialista that's a cross between an accountant and a lawyer.

01:28:35.370 --> 01:28:39.750
And he looks after me very well. And I discussed it at length with him and he said, no, no,

01:28:39.770 --> 01:28:42.670
you're going to invoice for this, which is what I wanted to do anyway.

01:28:44.290 --> 01:28:49.270
And so the guy was trying to pay me cash in such a way it would be visible.

01:28:49.830 --> 01:28:55.870
Okay. Couldn't be hidden. I confronted him over that, slapped the invoices down in front of him

01:28:55.870 --> 01:29:00.130
next time he came to see me and told him I knew who his business partner was in this venture,

01:29:00.150 --> 01:29:05.490
that it was my old antagonist in the UK. And what followed was a masterclass in body language

01:29:05.490 --> 01:29:11.430
of somebody caught out lying through their teeth. So I knew my old antagonist in the UK was

01:29:11.430 --> 01:29:17.870
involved. When that failed, I was then offered work on some swords. Swords in Italy are treated

01:29:17.870 --> 01:29:24.370
like firearms. You can't work on them without an armor as permit. Okay, that's a modern gunsmith's

01:29:24.370 --> 01:29:31.490
permit. And this antique dealer had already asked me if I possessed such a permit. And I said, no,

01:29:31.550 --> 01:29:37.010
I didn't realize he was checking the ground first, just seeing whether it could be compromised that

01:29:37.010 --> 01:29:42.250
way. So then a guy from another Italian city on the other side of Italy offered me some work

01:29:42.250 --> 01:29:49.550
on some swords. And I'm okay. But I did a very sensible thing. I went to the police first and I

01:29:49.550 --> 01:29:56.370
checked. I said, can I do this? And the police officer said, absolutely not. No, it would be

01:29:56.370 --> 01:30:03.990
like unless it's work on firearms, serious offense. And the first Italian dealer I mentioned,

01:30:04.150 --> 01:30:08.230
he dropped something into a subsequent conversation. So he knew he was part of it.

01:30:08.230 --> 01:30:15.470
So when the cash didn't work, they tried to set me up with working on basically illegal work on

01:30:15.470 --> 01:30:23.490
what would have been classed as firearms. Serious. Then when that didn't work, I was offered work

01:30:23.490 --> 01:30:29.030
on an excavated helmet, medieval helmet from somewhere in another European country. Yeah.

01:30:29.810 --> 01:30:34.150
And they wanted to, they came down to Italy a lot. So they said, right, I'll stop by

01:30:34.150 --> 01:30:39.490
and leave this thing with you. And I said, no, you won't. I will send you a document of provenance

01:30:39.490 --> 01:30:43.790
for you to fill in, because antiques here have their own passports attached to them.

01:30:43.970 --> 01:30:50.810
It's called a documento di trasporto. And it's because so many things get excavated here and

01:30:50.810 --> 01:30:58.110
then sold. Again, you can't be in possession of an excavated piece without it ringing alarm

01:30:58.110 --> 01:31:03.250
bells. And I said, absolutely not. No, you will fill this document in, you will tell me

01:31:03.250 --> 01:31:10.790
when you're coming, you'll make an appointment. And he just, he just vanished. So firstly, the money,

01:31:11.370 --> 01:31:16.670
then the swords, then an excavated piece. And I was telling these stories to my friends here.

01:31:16.950 --> 01:31:20.810
And one of them just said, as if it was completely normal, they said, oh, they're

01:31:20.810 --> 01:31:28.710
trying to blackmail you. So I was being set up at that point. So the, the, the restoration

01:31:28.710 --> 01:31:32.370
of the six armours had to be enough. I'm willing to bet, I haven't checked, but I'm willing

01:31:32.370 --> 01:31:38.530
to bet the amount of money had to be enough for it not to be a simple fine and a slap on

01:31:38.530 --> 01:31:41.930
the wrist for not declaring some earnings. It would have to be something with a prison

01:31:41.930 --> 01:31:46.690
centre is attached to it. Yeah. And then undoubtedly the plan was going to be

01:31:47.270 --> 01:31:52.510
get me in a compromising position. And then I go screaming to my contacts here saying,

01:31:52.610 --> 01:31:58.810
what do I do? What do I do? And it's, well, we could help you. But we'd need a favour.

01:31:58.810 --> 01:32:02.370
You know, it was like that. What was it going to be?

01:32:06.130 --> 01:32:12.970
Really, I couldn't give two shits. It's very less door than devil. It must devil's own harness.

01:32:14.030 --> 01:32:18.110
That could be the thing. Something, something. Oh, well, as a brief aside,

01:32:18.990 --> 01:32:23.870
as a brief aside, there is the devil's armour in ordinate in the north of Italy,

01:32:23.870 --> 01:32:27.710
because it had a two part base for the crest, which looks like two horns.

01:32:28.330 --> 01:32:35.630
So that's that is nicknamed the devil's armour. Anyway, I found out from a Freemason in the USA.

01:32:36.010 --> 01:32:44.450
We're now in 2020. And I was telling him about all this. And he said it would appear

01:32:45.330 --> 01:32:50.930
that somebody had sold a very valuable antique to a wealthy collector.

01:32:50.930 --> 01:32:58.650
And that included your input. But the client had grown tired of waiting

01:32:59.750 --> 01:33:03.270
and wanted his money back. And it was a considerable amount of money,

01:33:03.530 --> 01:33:08.410
which the dealer was then having trouble repaying. Now that may or may not be true.

01:33:09.090 --> 01:33:16.590
But the the essential truth at the base of this is a group, a little cabal within the

01:33:16.590 --> 01:33:23.190
antiques trade, I'm sure bought something and they did it knowing the only way they could make

01:33:23.190 --> 01:33:28.170
the money they wanted to make out of it. And that would not be inconsiderable was by having me work

01:33:28.170 --> 01:33:34.230
on it. But from the off, they knew I would say no. So it can't be anything legal. And

01:33:35.770 --> 01:33:40.630
you know that they tried the game with the cash from the word go. And that was when I

01:33:40.630 --> 01:33:45.570
was still working for that dealer in that city not far from here. So that means they were

01:33:45.570 --> 01:33:52.910
planning to blackmail me from the word go. Nice like that. So now with regard to what it is,

01:33:53.410 --> 01:33:59.450
I don't, regardless of what I might think, regardless of things I've been told,

01:34:00.810 --> 01:34:06.270
I don't want to know. And now we're going to get to why I feel different about this stuff now.

01:34:06.910 --> 01:34:11.890
Ever since now, this whole vendetta thing has worked at two levels. We've had what you

01:34:11.890 --> 01:34:16.610
might call the foot soldiers down at the bottom, these people in the trade. And then you have right

01:34:16.610 --> 01:34:26.150
at the top, the freemason element, because I have been completely disappeared. You know,

01:34:26.390 --> 01:34:30.270
and this I know when it happened, it happened in 2020, because my website

01:34:30.270 --> 01:34:36.430
suddenly got massive amounts of visits. It went up from a few hundred a month to nearly 3000.

01:34:37.230 --> 01:34:43.710
And first I thought, Oh, well, great. But although I sell ebooks things online,

01:34:44.350 --> 01:34:49.810
I should have expected my sales to go up, not necessarily by the same amount, but the internet

01:34:49.810 --> 01:34:55.450
is a numbers game. And if you're the traffic on your website goes up by the power of 10,

01:34:55.630 --> 01:35:01.350
you would expect your sales to at least go up to an extent. And they flatlined the opposite

01:35:01.350 --> 01:35:08.870
happened. They died. And then the traffic on the website came down over three months. And I now

01:35:08.870 --> 01:35:15.290
realized that by the time it had come back down to what I thought was normal, it was gone. By then

01:35:15.290 --> 01:35:21.590
Google had disappeared me. And so I've been I've been censored by Google, I've been censored by

01:35:21.590 --> 01:35:29.550
Amazon, YouTube as well for the videos I put on there. I know my websites have been

01:35:29.550 --> 01:35:36.350
attacked with bot traffic. Some some of the people visiting were real. But here's the thing.

01:35:36.870 --> 01:35:43.250
Now, these people didn't want to drive me out of the field because they want me to do that work

01:35:43.250 --> 01:35:49.270
clearly. And they still want me to do it. I know whatever it is, whatever it is.

01:35:51.850 --> 01:35:53.030
Must be really good.

01:35:54.550 --> 01:36:00.710
These things could be worth millions. Right. And the amount of money they've they've dropped on

01:36:00.710 --> 01:36:06.590
this already was sort of pissed away down the loo. What they did was this, you may remember the

01:36:06.590 --> 01:36:13.810
television show Lovejoy back in the 90s about the lovable rogue. Ian McShane. Yeah. Well,

01:36:15.290 --> 01:36:21.570
I can't even bear to watch those anymore now. Because the sort of lovable rogue thing about

01:36:21.570 --> 01:36:28.210
antiques dealers. Oh, the book spy, the author is called Jonathan Gash is a doctor who's a real

01:36:28.210 --> 01:36:34.190
name is John Grant. And in the books Lovejoy kills people, not infrequently. So the books are

01:36:34.190 --> 01:36:41.210
somewhat the other books are somewhat closer to real antiques world. But anyway, what happened

01:36:41.210 --> 01:36:49.030
was I'd been disappeared off the internet. But now if you think screw this, it's not

01:36:49.030 --> 01:36:55.210
worth it. I'll just go and do something else. Instead, I found myself in a version of the Truman

01:36:55.210 --> 01:37:02.310
show. I think the Lovejoy show in this case, they then provided me with a whole raft of new

01:37:02.310 --> 01:37:08.350
clients who were buying the books I was writing, like the ones I sent for you and Dick. And so

01:37:08.350 --> 01:37:15.410
this included, and I won't say they're people, hundreds of identities. I know some of them

01:37:15.410 --> 01:37:22.230
are real. Some of them weren't. They for effect, they even killed one of them off once. I apparently

01:37:22.230 --> 01:37:28.970
had this guy's widow writing to me. It's just bizarre. And what they've always tried to do is

01:37:28.970 --> 01:37:36.830
block my work with art, you know, which we'll mention at the end, and try and drag me back

01:37:36.830 --> 01:37:42.950
into the world of arms and armor. So hence the trouble they've gone to, the money they've

01:37:42.950 --> 01:37:49.210
spent, whatever it is, and truly I couldn't give two shits what it is I'm supposed to do

01:37:49.210 --> 01:37:55.450
or supposed to work on. The money they think they're going to make out of this has got to have six

01:37:55.450 --> 01:38:00.690
zeros at the end of it. And I suspect they've lost a lot already because they must have bought this

01:38:00.690 --> 01:38:06.790
thing or things, whatever they are. So they're out of pocket to a huge amount, I would think.

01:38:07.710 --> 01:38:11.650
And they expected to be able to make that back and make a vast profit

01:38:11.650 --> 01:38:15.550
at the end of it. And I have news for them. It's never going to happen.

01:38:17.590 --> 01:38:22.950
No, and this is where we come to how I feel about the stuff now. Truly. This may come as a surprise,

01:38:23.630 --> 01:38:30.550
but knowing what I know now, I would happily see every piece of armor and every weapon in every

01:38:30.550 --> 01:38:38.930
museum go into a car crusher tomorrow. Happily. That's the way I feel about that stuff now.

01:38:38.930 --> 01:38:46.150
I can take a detached academic view of it now with regard to the history side,

01:38:46.430 --> 01:38:51.430
with regard to military history, but you could not pay me to touch that stuff ever again.

01:38:53.570 --> 01:38:59.810
And here's a word to the wise, if someone actually did sidle up to me now and say,

01:39:00.270 --> 01:39:05.450
look, it's this, you know, would you would you please work on this and they put let's say

01:39:05.450 --> 01:39:09.970
some fabulous helmet down on the bench in front of me. If I had a hammer in my hand,

01:39:10.110 --> 01:39:19.890
I would reduce it to manage a minute. Yes, I would. I would. I won't use the language I was going to

01:39:19.890 --> 01:39:26.030
use. Just isn't that slightly you're taking out your your personal experiences on the whole of

01:39:26.030 --> 01:39:29.710
the whole of armor? I mean, surely the armor doesn't deserve that.

01:39:31.970 --> 01:39:40.470
Yes, in in my humble opinion, yes. I give it I'll give you an idea. Again, this will come as

01:39:40.470 --> 01:39:45.750
another surprise. And there's another little another little anecdote in here, which I haven't

01:39:45.750 --> 01:39:54.750
mentioned to you yet. I was top drawer restorer for a long time. And I had tools which were

01:39:54.750 --> 01:40:01.070
original armorers tools, which went back to the 16th century. And I'd sort of pick them up from here

01:40:01.070 --> 01:40:07.290
and there. And I also had 19th century sort of tinsmiths and coppersmiths tools, which was

01:40:07.290 --> 01:40:14.270
similar and some I had made when I set up my business in 1985. And so I was fully equipped

01:40:14.270 --> 01:40:19.430
armor as workshop, you know, very particular tooling. And I got to a point last year

01:40:19.430 --> 01:40:23.870
where I realized these tools are going to have to go. Because as long as I've got a workshop,

01:40:24.510 --> 01:40:28.410
these jokers are going to keep coming back and back and back because they'll think they've got

01:40:28.410 --> 01:40:33.970
a chance at tricking me into getting me into a position where finally they can do it. Yeah.

01:40:34.410 --> 01:40:41.250
And bearing in mind for your audience, this has been going on since 2019. So this is seven years

01:40:41.250 --> 01:40:47.790
and counting. And not only that, they must have been planning it before 2019. So this is a long

01:40:47.790 --> 01:40:55.970
time this has been going on already. And at first you might think, I mean, imagine, same with you,

01:40:56.050 --> 01:41:00.690
that you have to decide to never ride again. That you can't have anything to do with horses ever

01:41:00.690 --> 01:41:07.890
again. And people will think that for a craftsman, and then any other artisans out there,

01:41:08.830 --> 01:41:14.050
in your audience, will probably be thinking, how the hell could you do that? If that was

01:41:14.050 --> 01:41:21.110
your life for 40 years, you know, for a craftsman, the tools become a part of you. And I just thought,

01:41:21.250 --> 01:41:25.330
no, these, these bloody things are a curse. As long as I've got them, this is never going to stop.

01:41:25.990 --> 01:41:30.410
So I got rid of them. And, and, and here comes the anecdote.

01:41:32.230 --> 01:41:36.890
I had to make it absolutely public, because I thought these, if I just say I've got rid

01:41:36.890 --> 01:41:41.470
of them, they're not going to believe me. These people lie as easily as breathe. So they'll

01:41:41.470 --> 01:41:48.490
assume I'm lying as well. So I publicly put on my website, knowing if no one else would see it,

01:41:48.650 --> 01:41:55.690
they would, because, you know, being heavily monitored. And I began emailing people who I

01:41:55.690 --> 01:42:00.850
knew were other armors who just make armor for reenactment purposes, you know, like, like Dick.

01:42:02.870 --> 01:42:09.710
And I got a panicked email from a museum, which is going to remain nameless to save their

01:42:09.710 --> 01:42:17.570
blushes. And the curator saying, who bought my books, who said, don't, don't, don't, don't,

01:42:17.570 --> 01:42:23.710
don't, don't, do not put any more of this online. We'll have the lot. Okay, we'll buy the lot.

01:42:25.010 --> 01:42:33.290
And I thought, oh, good, jolly good. So we arrived at a price and the museum in question

01:42:33.290 --> 01:42:37.490
paid. And I thought, Oh, well, at least they're going to have a good home. You know, that's

01:42:37.490 --> 01:42:42.830
good. And, and I'm now completely emotionally divorced from them. I'm glad they've gone. That's

01:42:42.830 --> 01:42:48.670
fine. I don't feel bad about it. But then what happened was this, then I said, right, when are

01:42:48.670 --> 01:42:53.210
you going to come and take these things away? And the curator said, Oh, well,

01:42:55.430 --> 01:43:02.410
we're dealing just by chance. We're dealing with here we go. We're dealing with another

01:43:02.410 --> 01:43:09.230
business in your area. In fact, the town, the next town over. What a coincidence. He said,

01:43:09.250 --> 01:43:13.050
that we haven't, we haven't come to terms with them yet about what we want to buy.

01:43:13.510 --> 01:43:19.630
We hope to be able to conclude our dealings with that business and come over there to

01:43:19.630 --> 01:43:25.110
collect everything in the first half of next year. We hope this was October last year.

01:43:25.850 --> 01:43:33.310
So this guy is saying, having just dropped nearly 9000 euros in public funds, he's saying,

01:43:33.670 --> 01:43:38.990
Ah, hang on to the tools. Okay, we'll come and get them sometime next year, hopefully in the first

01:43:38.990 --> 01:43:46.030
half. And that was a huge red flag for me. I thought, hang on a minute. This is a guy who

01:43:46.030 --> 01:43:52.570
was desperate to stop me selling them to anybody else. Then they come up with the money

01:43:52.570 --> 01:43:56.990
for their museum. And then they want to leave me with the damn things.

01:43:58.210 --> 01:44:02.010
So at first I thought, well, I'll have to go into storage. And then I thought, no, no, no,

01:44:02.010 --> 01:44:07.010
no, no, I would still have access to them. So I could see how this could then be a temptation.

01:44:07.290 --> 01:44:12.190
If I were placed in that position of difficulty, where the way out would be to do that work,

01:44:12.850 --> 01:44:17.290
then I'd still have access to them. And I also had a word with a friend of mine who

01:44:17.930 --> 01:44:24.550
was used to procurement purposes from a European government. And they said, this stinks.

01:44:25.490 --> 01:44:30.370
There's no way a public body are going to drop nearly 9000 euros and then say,

01:44:30.730 --> 01:44:39.290
Ah, about sometime next year, maybe. So I wrote a long and detailed email to the civil servant

01:44:39.830 --> 01:44:46.570
in charge of the government body that runs that museum. And I said, you know, this is

01:44:46.570 --> 01:44:54.570
going to sound absurd, I know, but it's almost as if somebody bought those tools or paid me the money

01:44:54.570 --> 01:44:59.450
with the explicit intention of then leaving them with me, but in the process, stopping

01:44:59.450 --> 01:45:07.270
anyone else from buying them. Isn't that isn't that odd? Yeah. Yeah. And I said, look,

01:45:07.950 --> 01:45:14.090
if it turns out that let's say a sponsor, you know, a philanthropath, shall we say,

01:45:14.090 --> 01:45:19.990
if a sponsor came up with the money for your museum, and it's because of that as no hurry,

01:45:20.210 --> 01:45:25.050
you know, leaving with him for the moment, we'll sort it out when you like. I said,

01:45:25.730 --> 01:45:32.930
I am not going to babysit these tools to suit your sponsor. You are going to come and take

01:45:32.930 --> 01:45:44.470
them away now. And I got a very polite email back within 24 hours. And it was really quite to the

01:45:44.470 --> 01:45:50.110
point considering he was obviously not going to crap all over his subordinate publicly.

01:45:51.050 --> 01:45:57.210
But he said he had no right to buy anything. He's not competent to make acquisitions for

01:45:57.210 --> 01:46:04.350
this museum. End of story. And then he said, of course, we will arrange shipping immediately.

01:46:05.270 --> 01:46:10.930
So that it confirmed absolutely. They weren't being bought by that museum.

01:46:11.870 --> 01:46:16.450
But yes, but that's I suppose that's that's that's interesting to get a glimpse of how the

01:46:16.450 --> 01:46:24.750
network because presumably he was amazing as well. Exactly. Yeah. And all I will say about

01:46:24.750 --> 01:46:31.770
that museum is it's in a place with heavy connections to the Mason's. I'll just leave it at that.

01:46:32.170 --> 01:46:37.530
People can work that out for themselves. But yeah, yeah, exactly. So

01:46:38.390 --> 01:46:44.190
you see, I was trying to get rid of those tools. And the first thing they did was we got to

01:46:44.190 --> 01:46:51.370
stop this. Because if he gets rid of those, we're away, you know. And now a last little

01:46:51.370 --> 01:46:59.350
thing on that story is you know, I did germs podcast for the UK column recently. And

01:47:00.250 --> 01:47:07.730
few days later, I got a phone call. Now, the sort of let's let's face it, the sort of people I'm

01:47:07.730 --> 01:47:13.250
having trouble with will not be avid viewers of the UK column far far from it, I think.

01:47:13.750 --> 01:47:18.810
So but the UK column will of course be heavily monitored by the powers that shouldn't be

01:47:18.810 --> 01:47:29.370
obvious. And what must have happened was when Brian Garrish uttered the words, and tonight on UK,

01:47:29.750 --> 01:47:35.690
you know, Jim warfare podcast, we'll have Chris Dobson that will have sent up a red flag

01:47:35.690 --> 01:47:43.910
straight away. And so a few days later, this guy phones me. And he says he was in France.

01:47:44.930 --> 01:47:51.610
And he said, Well, after what you were talking about on the on the podcast, I thought you sound

01:47:51.610 --> 01:47:56.630
like an approachable guy. So I thought I'd phone you up. Yes, never explained where he got my phone

01:47:56.630 --> 01:48:03.790
number from. It's not on the website. So, you know, you get these these constant giveaways

01:48:03.790 --> 01:48:09.290
the whole time, because they're not very good actors. And he said, after what you were talking

01:48:09.290 --> 01:48:14.150
about on the podcast, you're probably going to view a phone call like this out of the blue

01:48:14.150 --> 01:48:22.310
was a bit suspicious. And I said, Yeah, absolutely. But he he plowed on bless him, he kept going.

01:48:22.750 --> 01:48:29.710
And he claimed to be an artist, he claimed to just want some some are some questions about

01:48:29.710 --> 01:48:35.410
Renaissance art. And then he just went straight on talking about Alma. And then at a certain

01:48:35.410 --> 01:48:40.590
point, he said, Oh, I used to collect a German pickle, how about you know, the helmets with the

01:48:40.590 --> 01:48:47.210
spike on the top. And I, right, exactly. And I thought, Sir, all right, so you're now telling

01:48:47.210 --> 01:48:53.250
me you're you're a collector. And you know, when it's coming, he was nervous from the beginning

01:48:53.250 --> 01:48:58.090
of the call. And then at a certain point, and I thought, here it comes. So he said,

01:48:58.090 --> 01:49:06.510
you know, still run a workshop to you. And I just just couldn't get him off the phone fast enough

01:49:06.510 --> 01:49:12.470
after that. There's a movie in this. It's got a shit ending, of course, because you don't,

01:49:12.470 --> 01:49:17.170
you don't get to see what the what this armor is that that, and you need to get to the

01:49:17.170 --> 01:49:25.750
same way where you pay the terrible price. See, yeah. Well, well done. And thank you.

01:49:25.750 --> 01:49:31.910
Um, but and I mean, I have no doubt they'll be watching this podcast as well. I mean,

01:49:31.950 --> 01:49:35.570
you'll be monitored for sure. Unless you're controlled up.

01:49:36.430 --> 01:49:41.250
Uh, fine. Unless you're controlled opposition, of course, in, in, in which case, they don't

01:49:41.250 --> 01:49:50.430
bother. How would that work? What use would I be? Give me, give me, give me one possible

01:49:50.430 --> 01:49:58.010
way I could be helping the enemy. I mean, well, not, not, not really. Oh, I'm shilling.

01:49:59.810 --> 01:50:05.150
You're shilling for Russia. No, no, no, you're. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm shilling for Russia.

01:50:06.190 --> 01:50:10.070
No, sir. So you're shilling for Russia. German shilling for China.

01:50:11.410 --> 01:50:17.150
Um, you know, Patrick Henningson is shilling for Iran, you know, and so on and so forth.

01:50:17.150 --> 01:50:27.010
Yeah. So anyway, Putin. Yes, I think that means I love Putin. I think I haven't got my pronunciation

01:50:27.010 --> 01:50:35.250
right yet, but okay. So anyway, so that, that brings us to the end of my sort of Masonic

01:50:35.250 --> 01:50:38.950
saga. So they're still at it. They still haven't learned their lesson.

01:50:40.490 --> 01:50:49.010
And it is, it's awfully sad, Chris, that, that this was your life. No, it's not your life. I hope it,

01:50:49.070 --> 01:50:54.990
I hope that I hope that you're sort of the warm glow you get of having not engaged with evil as

01:50:54.990 --> 01:51:01.650
sort of compensated in some way. Well, one of the, one of the disadvantages of getting white

01:51:01.650 --> 01:51:07.610
pilled is it does tend to get you asking questions about what is the point of all this,

01:51:07.610 --> 01:51:15.310
please? Why, why am I going through this? And I'm sure as, as they've been monitoring my

01:51:15.310 --> 01:51:21.470
communications, thanks to Google, someone locally confirmed for me that, yeah,

01:51:21.510 --> 01:51:25.170
Google have tier one access when you have a website parked on their servers.

01:51:25.570 --> 01:51:29.950
And that explained a great deal about how they seem to be reading my thoughts recently.

01:51:29.950 --> 01:51:32.530
No, they weren't reading my thoughts. They were reading your emails.

01:51:33.910 --> 01:51:39.650
Yeah, exactly. Well, it's, it's, look, it's, it's a, it's espionage 101. You have to have a feedback

01:51:39.650 --> 01:51:43.710
loop. You have to know that what you're doing is actually taking you where you want to go.

01:51:44.250 --> 01:51:48.810
So, and you, you will know that from the enemy's communications.

01:51:49.370 --> 01:51:52.090
Interesting. I will be, yeah.

01:51:52.910 --> 01:51:56.770
You've sparked a thought. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. I've experienced this.

01:51:57.270 --> 01:52:04.870
They do actually have people saying, you know, so how's, how's James coping with this or that?

01:52:05.230 --> 01:52:08.410
And you think, oh, hang on a second. This is all orchestrated.

01:52:09.250 --> 01:52:15.350
Anyway, I won't go there now. Chris, it's been great. I've actually got to go now because I,

01:52:15.410 --> 01:52:21.930
because I do fascinating podcasts and thank you. What tell us, is there anything you want

01:52:21.930 --> 01:52:24.940
to sell? Do you want to sell your books? What do you want to talk about in terms of

01:52:24.940 --> 01:52:27.800
working? Absolutely. Absolutely. Right.

01:52:28.740 --> 01:52:34.180
For people interested in military history and Renaissance art history, which is what I now do,

01:52:34.820 --> 01:52:38.720
I fell in love with the, after studying paintings to look at armor, I fell in love with the art

01:52:38.720 --> 01:52:45.640
itself. And that's what I write about now. And I've got a book coming out very shortly about

01:52:45.640 --> 01:52:50.860
three paintings by the artist Paolo Cello, which are thought to be the Battle of San Romano,

01:52:50.860 --> 01:52:59.100
which was 1432. And what I've done is I've used my experience of unpicking layers of mystery in

01:52:59.100 --> 01:53:07.560
my own life and my experience with real armor. And I show what the paintings actually show.

01:53:08.500 --> 01:53:16.700
And it's called San Romano, The Art of War. And it's on my website at, and here it is,

01:53:16.700 --> 01:53:24.240
it's Christobson. That's all one word, Christobson.it for Italy. So Christobson.it.

01:53:24.700 --> 01:53:30.080
And if people want to head over there, they can find my, you went to Florence recently,

01:53:30.080 --> 01:53:35.820
didn't you? Yeah, I loved you. You can find my book on the Ponte Vecchio of Florence,

01:53:36.000 --> 01:53:41.220
3000 years of history in that one. Another one about the medieval towers that used to,

01:53:41.220 --> 01:53:46.580
you know, loom over the city in the Middle Ages, and you'll find a new one about San Romano.

01:53:46.620 --> 01:53:54.080
And you can find my podcast there as well. So if people want to help break this damn of

01:53:54.080 --> 01:54:00.860
silence that's been put around me, come over to my website, you know, spend a little bit of

01:54:00.860 --> 01:54:06.460
money. And also, as that website is pretty much tailored for normies, if you have friends

01:54:06.460 --> 01:54:14.740
who are into history, tell your normie friends as well. So I just, I just say briefly, I looked at

01:54:14.740 --> 01:54:18.820
your book this morning, I cut several of the whole thing, but I gave it a kind of a thorough

01:54:18.820 --> 01:54:27.180
skim read. And it's fascinating. I mean, the detail that your knowledge of materials,

01:54:27.480 --> 01:54:33.540
artistic materials of obviously armor of technique, and you've got the burns to show it,

01:54:33.540 --> 01:54:37.700
the burn scars, you've got, you've done all this stuff, you've lived all this stuff.

01:54:37.880 --> 01:54:44.300
So I'm sure that your book about Uccello would be very, very interesting. Thank you,

01:54:44.820 --> 01:54:49.800
Chris Dobson, I'll put the details below. And everyone else, thank you for, thank you for

01:54:50.820 --> 01:54:56.640
watching my stuff. And do please continue to support me, you can actually support

01:54:56.640 --> 01:55:01.500
me direct now on my website, which is jamestandingpole.co.uk. Or you can buy me a coffee,

01:55:01.500 --> 01:55:07.760
support my sponsors, obviously, and keep listening. And yeah, thank you. Thank you for,

01:55:08.460 --> 01:55:10.140
thank you for enjoying my stuff. Bye bye.

01:55:12.800 --> 01:55:16.740
Good. Right, I've got to go. Chris, great talking to you.

01:55:18.280 --> 01:55:24.440
Okay, you're only 73% uploaded. So you've you've you can please can you leave your computer on

01:55:25.240 --> 01:55:28.560
until it's uploaded. Okay, thank you very much.

01:55:28.560 --> 01:55:33.660
Just just before you do disappear completely. Yeah.