Helen Castor: Joan of Arc

This is the story of Joan of Arc as you have never heard it before, told by Helen Castor, author of the acclaimed bestseller and BBC documentary series She-Wolves. Instead of the icon, she gives us a living, breathing young woman; a roaring girl fighting the English, and taking sides in a bloody civil war that was tearing fifteenth-century France apart. In this podcast interview she discusses how she came to write the book, and her attempt to retell the story stripped of the myths and legends. In Helen Castor's book she gives us a portrait of a 19-year-old peasant who hears voices from God; a teenager transformed into a warrior leading an army to victory, in an age that believed women should not fight. And it is also the story behind the myth we all know, a myth which began to take hold at her trial: that of the Maid of Orleans, the saviour of France, a young woman burned at the stake as a heretic, a woman who five hundred years later would be declared a saint. Joan and her world are brought vividly to life in Helen Castor's refreshing new take on the medieval world.