Professor Lawrence Goldman is an Emeritus Fellow of St. Peter’s College, Oxford. He is a former director of both the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and the Institute of Historical Research. He is a director and editorial advisor for History Reclaimed. This lecture was delivered at the New Culture Forum’s first #NCFLocals regional conference “A Celebration of England: Magna Carta and the Making of the English”, which was held in Salisbury in March 2025.