Dan Jones

Historian, presenter, journalist.

Dan Jones has quickly established himself as one of Britain’s favourite young historians. Since 2009, he has published 14 books, including 2012’s The Plantagenets: The Kings Who Made England, and in 2022, he released his first work of fiction and first in a planned trilogy, Essex Dogs. In TV, he boasts the creation of several documentary series for Channel 5. He has also written for The Times, The Telegraph, The Spectator, The New Statesman and GQ, and continues to write columns for the London Evening Standard.

Why did we invite him?

Our history episodes are among our most popular, and we have a laundry list of topics we hope to cover. Top of that list was the Crusades. Not only is it one of the most fascinating periods of history, but it’s also become one of the most oft-referenced in modern politics. But what actually happened? We wanted an expert to explain, and Dan was the perfect choice.

But that wasn’t all. In the moments before the cameras began to roll, Dan began to share his views about the modern world - something he is rarely asked to comment on. So we thought we ought to. That’s where we started, and it made for a fascinating conversation.

What did we learn?

We are often told that history is the ultimate predictor; the study of it allows us to find new insights into human nature, understanding which allows us to make educated guesses about where the species is headed. As Konstantin says, “human beings haven’t changed all that much, and they tend to react similarly to the same stimuli”.

Dan Jones disagrees. He sees that as a fringe benefit of his pursuit, but we must never mistake understanding history for understanding our future - in fact, it is the opposite task a historian is qualified for.

That being said, Dan recognises that, while mirror images are nowhere to be found, there are patterns. We shouldn’t dig into history books looking for parallels, but those parallels may emerge all the same.

”History never repeats itself, but it does work in an analogy, and we’re seeing something analogous to the reformation in our lifetimes.”

Much like the advent of Gutenberg’s printing press in the 15th century, the internet and social media have revolutionised not just the means of communication but its form. Debate, hypothesis, argument - these are unrecognisable in both how they are delivered and received from 50 years ago. Understanding this allows us to reflect on the societal change we’ve seen in that time.

It’s also accelerated the distortion of language. Dan explains how terms are co-opted, first through analogy and then by subsuming the original meaning. A “marathon” no longer strictly describes a single-minded athletic pursuit - it also describes sitting on your sofa, watching every episode of Doctor Who.

This leads us to the crux of our discussion: “crusade.”

It’s a term we’ve all come to accept as meaning any passionate, perhaps zealous struggle in the name of a single cause. To Dan, “that’s quite a distortion” of the term’s initial meaning. “The crusade against sugar” has little to do with giving your life to fight the enemies of your God.

But this is no surprise. The world is so radically different now that it’s hard for us to inhabit what Dan calls “the mind world” of the Middle Ages. Konstantin concurs, explaining that it’s almost unthinkable that any meaningful number of subjects (at least in the West) would put themselves on the line for their faith. Here, Dan offers an illustrative parallel.

”In terms of the presence of religion, the mind world of England & France in the Middle Ages was most akin to modern Saudi Arabia. In life, in politics - that’s the norm you have to [adjust] to.”

But this is when Dan’s view splinters from Konstantin’s. To Dan, it isn’t merely the religious cause that has lost its luster - it’s all causes. But why?