PLUME: Let’s look at a born and bred Roman that rebelled and was later celebrated as a home grown hero, like Herman the German. What is it about history that tends to erase those Roman ties? Is it just a desire to make them fully a home grown hero?

JONES: I think it’s that history changes because we want to tell each other different stories. It’s all part of our critique of the present day, really. And so, as we want to tell a different story, so we look at history differently. I think during the 19th century in England, the stories were very keen to celebrate the British Empire. And they look back to Rome as the great sort of justification, and that the British Empire was going to be greater than the Roman Empire. So they loved the Roman Empire. And I think, you know, that in the Renaissance they loved everything Roman because they were trying to revive Latin, and wanted to go back to Latin. So maybe it’s time for a more critical critique on the Romans.

PLUME: In Medieval Lives, you went into the myth that the people in the Middle Ages believed the world was flat – which was actually a Washington Irving invention meant to rewrite a bit of history…

JONES: Yeah.

PLUME: Honestly, after – what is it, four programs that you presented? You’ve done Crusades, Medieval Lives, Ancient Inventions…

JONES: Well, I did quite a few for Discovery actually. Ancient Inventions, and then another short series called Surprising Histories. We did The Surprising History of Rome, and The Surprising History of Sex and Love, which has never been shown in the States because I think Discovery Channel found it too disturbing.

PLUME: I think I have a screener tape of that that they sent out before they decided not to air it.

JONES: Oh really? I think the Sex and Loveone is one of the most interesting programs, actually, and it’s sort of about looking at the relationship between love and… I’m sorry, not love. It was really about sex. It was about the relationship between sex and power. And sort of why do you have periods of liberation – liberal sexual morays – and periods of repression. It all seems to be sort of tied up with politics, and particularly with men wanting to take over, to run the roost, and to cut women out – and when you have that happen, you get those periods of heavy sexual repression.

PLUME: It’s fascinating how often men feel threatened by women. Again and again – and I’ve told you this before – there’s one program I would love for you to do… and it’s a recurring theme in all the programs you’ve done… would just be Terry Jones’s History of History.

JONES: (laughing) That’s interesting.

PLUME: Analyzing who actually shapes history.

JONES: That’s a pretty good idea.

PLUME: Because you keep touching on certain accounts – like, “Here’s the Roman version of this…” or, “This Roman historian said this, but here is the opposing view.” So who actually crafts history?

JONES: Yeah…

PLUME: It’s become a bit of a joke on the program QIabout the documents of Pliny the Elder, and the statements that he had made in his chronicles about various subjects, and how laughable they’ve turned out to be when it comes to historical accuracy.

JONES: Yeah.

PLUME: And then Washington Irving, and how these things become popular knowledge when they are, in fact, myths…

JONES: Yeah…

PLUME: It’s just one of those things that keeps niggling every time I see one of your programs.

JONES: (laughing) I think it’s a very good idea, Ken. I might have to get back to you…

PLUME: Well, my fingers are crossed that I eventually get to see it.

JONES: Okay.

PLUME: It goes back to the first book that I ever seriously contemplated stealing from a library, I hate to admit… because it was impossible to find, and I found it in my first year in college… which was your Chaucer’s Knight…

JONES: Oh right, yeah.

PLUME: It was that weird sort of eye-opening moment when you realize that your teachers were wrong. ‘Cause I still have my notes about the “Knight’s Tale” from high school, where we were instructed that the Knight was a noble, heroic man… And then you point out that, no, Chaucer was saying the Knight was a less-than-noble mercenary, and the it was all satire…

JONES: Yeah, yeah.

PLUME: I actually sent a copy of the book to my English teacher, saying, “You might want to read this for future lectures.”

JONES: (laughing)

PLUME: Do you think understanding history requires certain perspectives to be able to uncover certain aspects? I mean, here you have a 400 year-old joke that scholars could never spot, but you – as a comedy writer – could clearly see…

JONES: I think it’s all about attitude. For example, I’ve been looking at the Ellesmere illustrations, in the Ellesmere manuscript of The Canterbury Tales, which is in the Huntington Museum. And I wrote to Mary Robinson, who’s the curator of the Huntington Library there, and asked her if she could have a look at the illumination of the monk under a microscope. And she very, very kindly agreed to look at it, and she said, “Well, we backlit it and we could see around the head, but it might just be what the artist was drawing to place the hat on.” And she really didn’t look any more. But then eventually, very kindly, she came and heard me talk about the illumination in Los Angeles, and invited me to come look at the illumination again, in the manuscript. And we went to look at it, and then we looked at its backlit version, and then we put some lights on the front, and as soon as we put lights on the front, you saw this gold under the monk’s chin, and elsewhere. And it’s quite clear that it had been blotted out. The point about the illumination is it doesn’t look anything like the description in the text, because in the text he’s large and mighty, he’s got a bald head, a red nose, he’s very jolly, and wears this gold pin, and all that sort of thing. He has hounds and he loves hunting. And in the illumination, there are the hounds there, but the illumination is of a man covered in black. He’s just covered in black. He’s got, like, a veil over his head. But when you looked at it through the microscope, you could see that he wasn’t jolly. You could see he’s got a gray wash over his face to calm it down – but with a microscope, you could see he’s got rosy cheeks and a red nose, but he’s also got this gold. I thought clearly that the illumination had been blotted out. And the reason why I tell you that, is that Mary Robinson didn’t see those things herself, because she wasn’t looking for that. And she didn’t see it. And it’s just that I was looking for that, and I thought there must be something there. So it was easy for me to see.

PLUME: It seems that also a certain mindset… I mean, you’ve had centuries of scholars analyzing The Canterbury Tales…

JONES: Yeah…

PLUME: … and coming to the same straightforward, straight laced conclusion about the Knight, but you coming from the perspective of knowing comedy and satire…

JONES: Yeah… I think, yeah… I mean, that’s what I’d like to think about that, because that’s exactly it. That I kind of… you could see where there were joke shapes, and you could tell in the text that that ought to be a joke there, ‘cause that’s how Chaucer told a joke very often. He said something every one line and then undercuts it in the next.

PLUME: So he was the first of the Peter Cook school of fine literature…

JONES: (laughing) I don’t know whether he was that, but you could certainly see that sort of thing going on, yes!

PLUME: One of the things that’s been remarked on before, and Paul O’Grady mentioned it in the interview that you did, was how there is humor that you bring to the historical programs and books that you do, in analyzing history. And you’d made the comment that people tend to ignore the fact that people have always liked to laugh, and that there is humor in these things. What is the thing that struck you as… and I hesitate to characterize it as such… but what is the greatest joke you’ve run across in historical accounts?

JONES: Oh god, um, ha! Um… I’m sorry, I can’t think…

PLUME: Certainly, irony abounds everywhere…

JONES: Yeah, but I think the irony… I think the idea is that Trajan’s Column is a monument to genocide is pretty ludicrous. I mean, I quite like the Germans hoodwinking Varus and concocting fictitious lawsuits to keep him busy. That’s a good one.

PLUME: I can imagine the strategy sessions about who they should send in next…

JONES: Yeah! (laughing)

PLUME: I thought the story of Attila the Hun’s motivation…

JONES: Yeah, that’s a great one too, the fact that he’s going to rescue a damsel in distress! That’s wonderful…

PLUME: Who essentially has sent him a missive meant to free her…

JONES: She said, “Please come and rescue me, and if you marry me, I’ll give you half the empire as a dowry.” It was quite a genuine offer. Talk about flimsy excuses for a war. I think Attila’s excuse about rescuing a damsel in distress had a lot more going for it than WMD in Iraq.

PLUME: See, that’s why men through the centuries have been so fearful of women…

JONES: (laughing)!

PLUME: Here they have the power to bring on the Huns.

JONES: (laughing)!

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