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A decade ago, The Guardian hailed Dan Jones as part of an exciting new generation of historians who were not academy bound and promised to become the next batch of tv presenters, replacing their mentors, like David Starkey. He's lived up to that hype, becoming a regular on British and even American television and developing a well-deserved reputation as one of our best narrative historians, with a particular emphasis on the 13th and 14th centuries. But he's hardly limited to Medieval England, writing about Game of Thrones with equal felicity.

His Magna Carta provides an outstanding display of his talents. In the first instance, he makes the tangled history of the period and the precipitating events comprehensible. The story begins with Henry II, one of the greatest English kings. When he took the throne England had been shattered by the civil war between his mother, Matilda, and her cousin, Stephen. He united and centralized at home while expanding the throne's power in France. Importantly, not only did Henry swear the traditional Coronation Oath, but like his grandfather, Henry I, and Stephen he issued a Coronation Charter. Henry I's was actually referred to as the Charter of Liberties and taken together, though they may have intended these texts and words to be merely pro forma, they instead created the idea of certain "traditional liberties" of Englishmen (at that time, landed men).

Henry II was succeeded by Richard I (The Lionheart) and then by John I (Lackland). We know these characters best from films like Lion in Winter and The Adventures of Robin Hood. While Richard, who was largely an absentee monarch as he fought the Crusades, has tended to get a pass in popular culture, John's bad reputation is well deserved. The author presents the history of all three kings and lurking in the background is always the dissatisfaction of the Church and the Nobles with their performance. Disputes with the papacy resulted in England being placed under interdict; war in France resulted in the losses that earned him his derogatory nickname; and, finally his own barons went to war against him. Though the their three reigns differed, the commonality uniting the three kings was that their programs were incredibly expensive and they were forced to bleed ever more money from their landed gentry. All of this led to the humiliating scene at Runnymede, where John was forced to yield to the Church and the Nobles and agree to the Magna Carta, a document which Mr.. Jones describes this way:
For the most part the Magna Carta is dry, technical, difficult to decipher, and constitutionally obsolete. Those parts that are still frequently quoted—clauses about the right to justice before one’s peers, the freedom from being unlawfully imprisoned, and the freedom of the Church—did not mean in 1215 what we often wish they would mean today. They are part of a document drawn up not to defend in perpetuity the interests of national citizens but rather to pin down a king who had been greatly vexing a small number of his wealthy and violent subjects. The Magna Carta ought to be dead, defunct, and of interest only to serious scholars of the thirteenth century.

Yet it is very much alive, one of the most hallowed documents in the constitutions of numerous countries, and admired as a foundation stone in the Western traditions of liberty, democracy, and the rule of law. How did that happen?
The rest of the book does address the document's historical effect, but even more so its cultural afterlife. For that question, of why it is still alive, even though English kings quickly began ignoring it, is part of the Miracle of the Anglosphere. [I use the term "Miracle" quite intentionally, in response to the way Jonah Goldberg tries to site it 500 years later.]

Mr. Jones is unquestionably right that much of the text matters little to us. Indeed, it is much like the Declaration of Independence, whose list of specific complaints against king George we seldom consider (though even some of them echo the provisions of Magna Carta). But several broad principles have informed the politics of the English-speaking world ever since and have thence been exported to the rest of the globe.

(1) That certain rights and liberties precede the sovereign's initial claim of power.

(2) That the sovereign is bound by the law of the land just as surely as every other citizen thereof.

(3) That we are all entitled to justice before a jury of our peers.

(4) That interest in property is one of the protected liberties.

(5) That the Church and the State are not coterminous.

(6) That the need of the sovereign to extract taxes from the citizenry creates an obligation on the sovereign to consult over the form and extent of said taxation.

This last is recognized as a form of proto-parliamentarianism, but let us emphasis an implication that we too often ignore. While the Colonists demanded "No taxation without representation," this birth moment shows us what we owe to the formulation in its reverse: "No representation without taxation." Follow history back and forth and we see the irony that we owe democracy and classical liberalism to the fact that the modern state required money and the source of that money was the demos. Folks often seek to diminish Magna Carta, because it only actually applied to the nobles, and the Constitution, because it only applied to white men, but the fact is that they applied to taxpayers. And the rise of the state and the rise of capitalism and the universalization of suffrage would inevitably go hand-in-hand-in-hand. Pretty miraculous that.


(Reviewed:)

Grade: (A+)


Websites:

Dan Jones Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: Dan Jones (writer)
    -FILMOGRAPHY: dan Jones (IMDB)
    -TWITTER FEED: @dgjones
    -AUTHOR PAGE: Dan Jones (Georgina Capel Associates ltd)
    -BOOK SITE: Magna Carta (Penguin Random House)
    -AUTHOR PAGE: Dan Jones (History.com)
    -ESSAY: The Mad King and Magna Carta: How did a peace treaty signed — and broken — 800 years ago become one of the world’s most influential documents? (Dan Jones, July 2015, Smithsonian Magazine)
[E]ngland in the 13th century was in no sense lawless. If anything, it was one of the most deeply governed places on earth. From at least the time of Alfred the Great (A.D. 871-899) and most likely long before, English law had been codified, written down and pretty efficiently enforced. When the Normans invaded England in 1066, they continued to issue written legal codes, often when a new king was crowned. John’s father, Henry II (1133-1189), had been a particularly enthusiastic legal reformer. He created swaths of new legal processes and is often described as the father of English common law, that body of custom and precedent that complements statutory law. So the point of Magna Carta in 1215 was not to invent laws to fill the vacuum of anarchy. Rather, it was to restrain a king who was using his legal powers rather too keenly. [...] By the end of the 13th century Magna Carta’s terms were becoming less important than its symbolic weight—the crown’s acknowledgment that it was bound by the law. Though Magna Carta may not have been much cared-for during the Tudor years of the 16th century—Shakespeare’s play King John makes no mention of the great charter, concentrating instead on Arthur of Brittany’s death—it roared back into life in the 17th century. The great lawyer and radical politician Sir Edward Coke made Magna Carta the foundation of his opposition to Charles I—who lost his head in 1649 for refusing to accept that he should be bound by the law.By then the document’s influence was spreading beyond the British Isles; clauses from Magna Carta were written into statutes governing the American colonies from as early as 1639. Later, when the people of Massachusetts rebelled against the Stamp Act, they pointed out that it violated the core principles of “the great Charter.” When the colonies overthrew British rule altogether, the Declaration of Independence condemned George III for obstructing the administration of justice, “for imposing Taxes on us without our Consent; for depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury” and for “transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny.” Nearly identical complaints had been lodged against King John 561 years before. Magna Carta also influenced the state-building that followed. Article III of the Constitution stipulates that “the trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury,” and Articles V and VI of the Bill of Rights—which hold, respectively, that “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury...nor be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law” and that “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial”—are essentially paraphrases of Magna Carta Clauses 39 and 40.

    -ESSAY: Magna Carta and kingship (Dan Jones, 13 Mar 2015, British Library)
    -ESSAY: Magna Carta: the things you didn't know: 800 years ago, Magna Carta was granted and in 2015 the reunited copies are on display. Here's the story of the seminal document (Dan Jones, 09 Jun 2015, The Telegraph)
The most famous clauses of Magna Carta are numbered 39 and 40. “No free man is to be arrested, or imprisoned, or disseised, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any other way ruined, nor will we go against him or send against him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.” And, “to no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay, right or justice.”

These have been interpreted in the centuries that followed 1215 as setting out the basic liberties of an English subject. They were seized upon by Sir Edward Coke and subsequent opponents of Charles I during the 17th century. The Founding Fathers drew on them in writing the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. These ideas are present in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – described in 1946 by its champion Eleanor Roosevelt as “a Magna Carta for all mankind”.

Really, though, this is only a small part of Magna Carta, buried far down the treaty. More important at the time were clauses that guaranteed the freedom of the English Church and the city of London and placed heavy limits on the king’s ability to exploit his feudal prerogatives and extort his barons.

    -ESSAY: Why Game of Thrones is the ultimate historical mash-up (Dan Jones, 12 April 2019, The Telegraph)
    -ESSAY: Hay Festival 2012: Dan Jones on Freedom of Speech: In the Middle Ages badmouthing the monarch was risky business, writes historian Dan Jones (Dan Jones, 05 Jun 2012, The Telegraph)
    -ESSAY: a scare could be just what the Lions needed,/a> (Dan Jones, 18 June 2013, Evening Standard)
   
-ESSAY: What losing my hair has taught me about men (Dan Jones, 17 February 2017, Evening Standard)
    -REVIEW: of The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I by Stephen Alford (Dan Jones, The Times uk)
    -REVIEW: of Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel, Victim by John Guy (Dan Jones, The Times uk)
    -ESSAY: Rise of the Plantagenets: The Plantagenets are all over our stage and screen. So how do modern actors portray a medieval monarch? (Dan Jones, 5/06/12, The Sunday Times)
    -REVIEW: of The Following Game by Jonathan Smith (dan Jones, New Statesman)
    -ESSAY: Ian Botham: the Power and the Glory (Dan Jones, 4/27/11, New Statesman)
    -ESSAY: Since the dawn of time (Dan Jones, 11/05/09, New Statesman)
    -ESSAY: Resolving the metaphysical muddle: Is their really much difference between Karen Armstrong's religion-lite approach and the secular humanism of atheists? (Dan Jones, 8/09/09, The Guardian)
    -ESSAY: The downside of religious doing: Research into the effects of group belonging suggests that its powerful binding effects may have a darker aspect (Dan Jones, 4/22/09, The Guardian)
    -ESSAY: The Templeton Foundation is not an enemy of science: Jerry Coyne claims the Templeton Foundation corrupts science and uses its money solely to give credibility to religion. It doesn't (Dan Jones, 4/08/11, The Guardian)
    -PLAY-BY-PLAY: England 20 - 17 Australia (Dan Jones, 22 Nov 2003, The Guardian)
    -ESSAY: The Servant of Five Kings: One of the few men who remained loyal to King John, William Marshal helped broker Magna Carta. (Dan Jones, Jan. 9, 2015, Wall Street Journal)
    -FavoriteFive: Dan Jones recommends five of his favorite History books (Dan Jones, 20 / 09 / 2019, Marina Amaral)
    -ESSAY: How Boris Johnson won -- and Jeremy Corbyn lost (Dan Jones, December 13, 2019, CNN)
    -ESSAY: What the Far Right Gets Wrong About the Crusades ( Dan Jones, October 10, 2019, TIME)
    -ESSAY: How Medieval Fake News Brought Down the Knights Templar (Dan Jones, October 13, 2017, TIME)
    -ESSAY: We’re still paying the price of the crusades (Dan Jones, 31 August 2019, Daily Mail)
    -ESSAY: So what did the Plantagenets ever do for us? Apart from give us our laws, our language and save us from the French! (Dan Jones, The Mail On Sunday)
    -REVIEW: of The Hundred Years War III: Divided Houses, by Jonathan Sumption (Dan Jones, The Spectator)
    -REVIEW: of Bouts of Mania: Ali, Frazier, Foreman and an America on the Ropes, by Richard Hoffer (Dan Jones, The Spectator)
    -ESSAY: English embroidery: the forgotten wonder of the medieval world (Dan Jones, 28 September 2013, The Spectator)
    -REVIEW: of Suzannah Lipscomb’s A Visitor’s Companion to Tudor England (Dan Jones, The Spectator)
    -REVIEW: of Blood Cries Afar: The Forgotten Invasion of England, 1216 by Sean McGlynn (Dan Jones, The Spectator)
    -REVIEW: of The Age of Chivalry: Culture and Power in Medieval Europe, 950-1450 by Hywel Williams (Dan Jones, The Spectator)
    -REVIEW: of Sister Queens by Julia Fox (Dan Jones, The Spectator)
    -REVIEW: of A Royal Passion: The Turbulent Marriage of Charles I and Henrietta Maria by Katie Whitaker (Dan Jones, The Spectator)
    -REVIEW: of Anne Boleyn by G. W. Bernard (Dan Jones, The Spectator)
    -REVIEW: of Churchill by Paul Johnson (Dan Jones, The Spectator)
    -REVIEW: of Empires of the Imagination by Holger Hoock (Dan Jones, The Spectator)
    -REVIEW: of God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science by James Hannam (Dan Jones, The Spectator)
    -REVIEW: of What Price Liberty? How Freedom was Won and is Being Lost by Ben Wilson (Dan Jones, The Spectator)
    -REVIEW: of Deadly Sins by Nicholas Coleridge (Dan Jones, The Spectator)
    -ESSAY: Only a mediaevalist can understand the present: Dan Jones says that our own era of disease, superstition, disorder and economic chaos is best explained by those who understand the Middle Ages (Dan Jones, 16 May 2009, The Spectator)
    -REVIEW: of The Year 1000 by Valerie Hansen (Dan Jones, Times uk)
    -ESSAY: How I cracked the REAL Da Vinci code: Dan Jones on the true story behind the most notorious secret society in history, the Knights Templar (Dan Jones, 2 September 2017, Daily Mail)
    -ESSAY: Richard still the criminal king (Dan Jones, February 6, 2013, CNN)
    -ESSAY: How ‘Game of Thrones’ Is (Re)Making History (Dan Jones, 3/31/13, Wall Street Journal)
    -VIDEO: 1066: A Year to Conquer England (BBC 2)
    -VIDEO: Secrets of Great British Castles: Join historian Dan Jones on a journey back in time to the zenith of Britain's most iconic structures and their infamous inhabitants. (Netflix)
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-PODCAST: Dan Jones on writing historical fiction (History Extra Podcasst, 9/15/22)
    -PODCAST: Exclusive podcast: Dan Jones on the human stories of the crusades: In this lecture recorded at BBC History Magazine’s 2019 History Weekends, historian and TV presenter Dan Jones explores the most notorious period of conflict in medieval history (History Extra)
    -AUDIO INTERVIEW: Dan Jones: “Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty” (Diane Rehm Show, Oct 20 2015)
    -VIDEO LECTURE: Magna Carta: Dan Jones, author of Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty, talked about the creation of the Magna Carta and its impact on democratic principles, including the language used in the U.S. Constitution. 2015 marked the document’s 800th anniversary. (C-SPAN, October 23, 2015, Anderson's bookshop)
    -VIDEO LECTURE: Dan Jones, “Magna Carta” (Boston Athenæum on October 22, 2015)
    -INTERVIEW: Birth of Liberty: Historian and author Dan Jones says the genetics of the Magna Carta are embedded in the Declaration of Independence and other great founding documents. (Mark Wolf, JULY/AUGUST 2016, STATE LEGISLATURES MAGAZINE)
    -VIDEO LECTURE: Dan Jones: "The Templars" (Dan Jones, Sep 20, 2017, Politics & Prose)
    -AUDIO INTERVIEW: So You Think You Know The Magna Carta…? (Amanda Honigfort, October 27, 2015, WILL)
    -INTERVIEW: My first car - historian Dan Jones: I crashed my Audi, but it was the shih-tzu's fault (Paul Hudson, 14 October 2016, The Telegraph)
    -PROFILE: They're too cool for school: meet the new history boys and girls: Theory is a thing of the past for these hip young historians (Oliver Marre, 27 Jun 2009, The Guardian)
    -PROFILE: Dan Jones on the Templars and ‘Knightfall’: Who were the Templars, what do we know about them, and how are they linked to the holy grail? As the historical drama Knightfall airs on the History channel (Rachel Dinning, 6/27/19, History Extra)
    -INTERVIEW: Interview with Dan Jones, author of The Plantagenets: The Kings Who Made England (Medievalists.net)
    -PODCAST: Crusaders with Dan Jones: Who were the men and women who took up the cross and journeyed to Holy Lands? Danièle speaks with Dan Jones about his latest book on crusaders and on why it’s important for historians to talk about the crusades today. (Helen Castor on the History Extra Podcast)
    -INTERVIEW: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of the Templars: An Interview with Dan Jones (Danièle Cybulskie, Medievalists.net)
    -INTERVIEW: In Conversation with Dan Jones (Words with Jam, 13 February 2015)
    -AUDIO INTERVIEW: A Brief History on the Importance of ... Well, History, With Dan Jones: Once dubbed "England's edgiest historian," author Dan Jones delights in finding new ways to make history come alive for everyone - whether you thought it was for you or not. (Christina Harcar, Nov 7, 2017, Audible)
    -INTERVIEW: Five minutes with… Dan Jones (The History Vault)
    -INTERVIEW: I followed my nose,’ – Historian Dan Jones on writing, Game of Thrones and preserving friendships (Nothing in the Rulebook, November 8, 2019)
    -PODCAST: Dan Jones on the secrets of popular history: Historian, author and broadcaster Dan Jones explains his path to success (History Extra, 8/17/18)
    -INTERVIEW: How historian Dan Jones takes inspiration from Game of Thrones when writing his books: Dan Jones writes every history book as though it were a Netflix drama. Now he tells Sarah Freeman why a 12th century woman from Beverley is among his latest leading ladies. (Sarah Freeman, 15th October 2019,Yorkshire Post)
    -INTERVIEW: Historian Dan Jones on Medieval money & Templar conspiracies (Glint)
    -AUDIO INTERVIEW: Dan Jones: “The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors” (The Diane Rehm Show | Dec 31, 2014)
    -INTERVIEW: WRITER DAN JONES TALKS HISTORY & TELEVISION (The Resident, 29th October 2014)
    -PODCAST: Interview with Historian Dan Jones (Tudors Dynasty Podcast, June 23, 2019)
   
-INTERVIEW: with Dan Jones (the Borgia Bull, 9/02/17)
    -INTERVIEW: Dan Jones: In Conversation (Get History, 29 November 2019)
    -INTERVIEW: Our Exclusive Interview With Historian, Author And Presenter Dan Jones (Yorkshire Reporter, 01/01/2016)
    -INTERVIEW: BGN Interviews author Dan Jones on upcoming series, ‘Knightfall’ (Kyndal Wilson, December 5, 2017, Black Girl Nerds)
   
-PODCAST: Dan Jones on The Knights Templar (History Hit)
    -PODCAST: Interview: Historian Dan Jones on the Knights Templar (Wondery / Patrick Wyman)
    -PODCAST: Dan Jones Interview: Wars of the Roses and The Plantagenets (Medieval Archives, 13 October 2014)
    -INTERVIEW: Interview: Dan Jones: Helen Charman talks to historian and journalist Dan Jones about his new book, Cambridge and Horrible Histories (Helen Charman, May 21 2012, Varsity)
    -INTERVIEW: TV historian Dan Jones says shows like Poldark and Indian Summer are guilty of ‘reverse sexism’ (Hanna Flint, 15 Mar 2016, Metro)
    -INTERVIEW: Entrepreneur Spotlight: London Author and Historian, Dan Jones [Entrepreneur Spotlight: London Author and Historian, Dan Jones,/a> (Maria Rochelle, 11/15/16, Veu)
   
-INTERVIEW: New book on Crusades uses ‘diverse’ personal experiences to tell story of holy wars (Michael Gryboski, 10/12/19, Christian Post)
    -PODCAST: Henry VIII’s Will – Podcast with Dan Jones (Suzannah Lipscomb, 2/04/16)
    -INTERVIEW: Twenty Questions with Dan Jones: ‘The word is like a brick. You can build a house with it, light a match off it or chuck it through the prime minister’s window’ (Times Literary Supplement)
    -INTERVIEW: Dan Jones Recommends His Top History Books of 2019 (Mark Skinner, 11/21/19, waterstone's)
    -AUDIO INTERVIEW: Dan Jones: “The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors” (Diane Rehm, 10/30/14)
    -AUDIO INTERVIEW: Dan Jones: Host Louie Saenz welcomes author and historian Dan Jones to the program to talk a little about his early years and some of his work. His books the Peasants Revolt, The Plantagenets: The Kings who made England and the Hollow Crown and his recent book the Crusaders: An Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Land. (Louie Saenz, October 27, 2019, Perspectives)
    -PODCAST: The Crusades, with Dan Jones ( Helen Castor, History extra)
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-ARCHIVES: Dan Jones (Daily Mail)
    -ARCHIVES: Dan Jones (The Spectator)
    -ARCHIVES: Dan Jones (Smithsonian)
    -ARCHIVES: "dan jones" (Medievalists.net)
    -ARCHIVES: Dan Jones (The Guardian)
    -ARCHIVES: Dan Jones (Daily Beast)
    -ARCHIVES: Dan Jones (New Statesman)
    -ARCHIVES: Dan Jones (Evening Standard)
    -ARCHIVES: Dan Jones (The Telegraph)
    -REVIEW: of Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty by Dan Jones (Ferdinand Mount, London Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: of Magna Carta ()
    -REVIEW: of Magna Carta (Edmund Fawcett, NY Times)
    -REVIEW: of Magna Carta (Kirkus)
    -REVIEW: of Magna Carta (Publishers Weekly)
    -REVIEW: of Magna Carta (Elizabeth Chadwick, The History Girls)
    -REVIEW: of Magna Carta (Lt. Col. Kevin E. Gentzler, U.S. Army, Retired, Military Review)
    -REVIEW: of Magna Carta (Steve Donoghue)
    -REVIEW: of Magna Carta (Edge Induced Cohesion)
    -REVIEW: of Magna Carta (John Formy-Duval, Run, Spot, Run)
    -REVIEW: of Crusaders by Dan Jones (Erik Spanberg, CS Monitor)
    -REVIEW: of The Crusaders (Publishers Weekly)
    -REVIEW: of The Crusaders (James Barr, The Times uk)
    -REVIEW: of The Crusaders (Minoo Dinshaw, The Spectator)
    -REVIEW: of The Templars by Dan Jones (History Net)
    -REVIEW: of The Templars (Christopher de Bellaigue, The Guardian)
    -REVIEW: of The Templars (Alexander Larman, The Guardian)
    -REVIEW: of the Templars (Hindustan Times)
    -REVIEW: of the Templars (Edward James, Historical Novel Society)
    -REVIEW: of Realm Divided by Dan Jones (Toby Clements, The Telegraph)
    -REVIEW: of The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors by Dan Jones (J. S. Hamilton, The Historian)
    -REVIEW: of The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors by Dan Jones (Jessie Childs, The Telegraph)
    -REVIEW: of The Hollow Crown (E. M. Powell, Historical Novel Society)
    -REVIEW: of The Plantagenets by Dan Jones (Nigel Jones, The Telegraph)
    -REVIEW: of The Plantagenets (HistoryNet)
    -REVIEW: of The Plantagenets (Alexander Larman, The Guardian)
    -REVIEW: of The Plantagenets (Christina Hardyment, Independent)
    -REVIEW: of The Plantagenets (Becca Selby, Manchester Historian)
    -REVIEW: of The Plantagenets (ben Wilson, New Statesman)
    -REVIEW: of The Plantegents (Inverarity is not a Scottish village)
    -REVIEW: of The Plantagenets (Jules Wagman, Tampa Bay Times)
    -REVIEW: of The Plantagenents (David Horspool, The Telegraph)
    -REVIEW: of The Plantagenets (Francesca Rheannon, Writers Voice)
    -REVIEW: of Summer of Blood: the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 by Dan Jones (Tom Payne, The Telegraph)
    -REVIEW: of Summer of Blood (Boyd Tonkin, The Independent)
    -REVIEW: of Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages by Dan Jones (Kevin Stroud, New York Times Book Review)
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-TV REVIEW: of Britain's Bloodiest Dynasty (Ellen E. Jones, The Independent)

Book-related and General Links:

    -The Magna Carta Project
    -Magna Carta (National Archives)
    -Magna Carta Trust
    -Magna Carta: an introduction (Claire Breay, Julian Harrison, 28 Jul 2014, British Library)
    -Magna Carta: Muse and Mentor (Library of Congress)
    -Magna Carta (National Constitution Center)
    -PODCAST: Everything you Always Wanted to Know About Magna Carta (History Extra, 12/13/2020)
    -Magna Carta (History Extra)
    -
   
-ESSAY: The Magna Carta’s Constitutional Tradition (Will Sellers, June 21, 2024, AIER)
    -ESSAY: Why Magna Carta matters? (History.co.uk)
    -Magna Carta (Constitutional Rights Foundation)
    -AUDIO BOOK: Magna Carta Commemoration essays (1915) (Libri Vox)
   
-PODCAST: Nicholas Vincent on the Magna Carta: Did an 800-year old piece of parchment really change the world? (Russ Roberts, 5/18/15, Econ Talk)
    -DISCUSSION: Is 15 June 1215 the true date of Magna Carta? Two historians debate (History Extra, 6/15/21)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: The Language of Liberty: A review of Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World, by Daniel Hannan. (Michael Barone, Claremont Review of Books)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Magna Carta and Us: James Stoner looks at 800 years of the Magna Carta. (James R. Stoner, Jr., Claremont Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: of THE SHADOW OF THE GREAT CHARTER: COMMON LAW CONSTITUTIONALISM AND THE MAGNA CARTA by Robert M. Pallitto (Walter J. Kendall III, Law & Politics Book Review)
    -VIDEO LECTURE: Magna Carta: Myth and Meaning (David Starkey, May 11, 2015, Intelligence Squared)
    -THIS DAY IN HISTORY: June 15, 1215: King John puts his seal on the Magna Carta (History.com)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Parliamentarism Recidivus: Review of Parliamentarism: From Burke to Weber, by William Selinger, and Parliament the Mirror of the Nation: Representation, Deliberation, and Democracy in Victorian Britain, by Gregory Conti (NOAH A. ROSENBLUM, New Rambler)
    -VIDEO ARCHIVES: Magna Carta (You Tube)
    -PODCAST: Lee Ohanian, Arnold Kling, and John Cochrane on the Future of Freedom, Democracy, and Prosperity: Lee Ohanian, Arnold Kling, and John Cochrane talk with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the future of freedom, democracy, and prosperity. Recorded in front of a live audience at Stanford University's Hoover Institution as part of a conference on Magna Carta, the three guests give their perspective on the future of the American economy and the interaction between politics and economics. Each guest makes a brief presentation at the start followed by a moderated conversation. (Russ Roberts, Jul 13 2015, EconTalk)
    -ESSAY: From Magna Carta to universal suffrage, the 1000-year history of British democracy (Tom Chivers, 7 June 2017, The Telegraph)
    -ESSAY: It made us free: Parliamentary democracy, trial by jury or habeas corpus - it can be argued that all these flowed from this document. (Melvyn Bragg, 11 June 2015, New Statesman)
    -ESSAY: Magna Carta was forged from royal failure: No coincidence that the most celebrated of all the waymarks on the road to freedom under the law was sealed by England’s most appalling king. (Tom Holland, 11 June 2015, New Statesman)
    -ESSAY: Not so radical: Jesse Norman on Magna Carta’s conservatism:: Here, as so often in our history, it is property rights that secure individual freedom. (jesse Norman, 11 June 2015, New Statesman)
    -ESSAY: A striking example of useful myths: I’m no Magna Carta fanboy, but many revolutionaries appropriated the document to legitimise their causes. (Owen Jones, 5 June 2015, New Statesman)
    -REVIEW: of 1215: The Year of Magna Carta By Danny Danziger and John Gillingham (Bruce Heydt, History Net)
    -ESSAY: 1215 and All That: In the bitter 13th Century struggle between King John and the upstart English barons, the Magna Carta was far from the last word (James Lacey, History Net)
    -ESSAY: The Barons’ Wars: Battle of Lewes (David A. Johnson, May 2006, Military History
    -ESSAY: MAGNA CARTA, LIBERALISM, AND THE HUMAN RIGHTS AGENDA (BENJAMIN ADAMSON, Western Australian Jurist)
   
-ESSAY: Was King John really that bad? Yes! (Marc Morris, June 2015, BBC History Magazine)
    -ARCHIVES: "magna carta" (New Statesman)
    -ARCHIVES: "magna carta" (The Telegraph)
    -REVIEW: of They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty, by John G. Turner: What Liberty Meant to the Pilgrims (NATHANAEL BLAKE, June 18, 2020, National Review)
    -ESSAY: Covenants and the Common Good: Toward a Renewed Politics (Bonnie McKernan, June 25, 2020, Mere Orthodoxy)
    -ESSAY: What if Magna Carta had died (in vain)?: The agreement between King John and the barons has become part of the English national myth (POLLY MACKENZIE, 9/17/20, UnHerd)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: A Timely Reminder of Liberty’s Roots: a review of Summoning Magna Carta: Freedom’s Symbol Over a Millennium by Zachary Gorman (Augusto Zimmermann, 10/06/21, Quadrant)