Professor Andrew Jotischky is Head of the History Department at Lancaster University. His research interests are centred on medieval religious beliefs, traditions and practices, and on religious institutions.
  • Xmas Pudding © Photowitch | Dreamstime.com

    For we all like figgy pudding!

    On Christmas Day most of us will be sitting down to a large dinner made of the same kind of food: turkey and stuffing, various trimmings, brussels sprouts, followed by Christmas pudding and mince pies. We take it for granted that this is traditional Christmas food, even if we are aware that turkey replaced goose only in the twentieth century, and that there is a huge variety of other kinds of seasonal foods, including spiced beef and ham.

  • A feast fit for kings: how the barons might have celebrated Magna Carta

    For such a seminal historical event, Magna Carta is in some respects poorly recorded. We know quite a lot about who the rebel and loyalist barons were and where they came from, and we can reconstruct up to a point their movements in the weeks leading up to the peace treaty that Magna Carta was intended to be. But one of the many things we don’t know is how the barons who forced King John to assent to Magna Carta at Runnymede in June 1215 celebrated when it was all over.