We may be living in the last days of the South Bank Show, but Melvyn Bragg is still going strong on Radio 4. Today's 'In Our Time' was all about Magna Carta - that medieval ragbag of baronial strong-arming. The show tries to answer what the following words meant and mean:
“No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land”.
As regular readers will know, this is clause 39 of the Great Charter. Nicholas Vincent, one of the participants, also kindly gave a great talk at the BL on this very subject.
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