The Battle of Agincourt (25th October 1415)
with Dr Tobias Capwell, FSA,
(Curator of Arms & Armour, The Wallace Collection, London)
at Sutton Hoo, Saturday, 24th October, 2015
A 600th Anniversary Special on the famous Battle of Agincourt. This battle has historically been the subject of much misunderstanding and misconception. It has come to be bound up with modern notions of national identity and Anglo-French rivalry, and in the popular imagination is often imagined as a fight solely between low-born English archers and aristocratic French knights. This basic mistake has distorted our popular perception of the battle in fundamental ways. Understanding something of the authentic physical realities of the battle can do much to bring the real historical event back into focus.
Provisional Programme
09.50 – 10.15: Coffee on arrival
10.15 – 11.15: Plucky Englishmen vs. Haughty Frenchmen – Agincourt in Popular Culture and Conception
11.15 – 11.40: Coffee break
11.40 – 12.40: “Fellas Let’s Go!” – The Battle and its Historical Context
12.40 – 14.00: Lunch break
14.00 – 14.50: Arms and Armour of the Archers
14.50 – 15.10: Tea break
15.10 – 16.00: Arms and Armour of the Men-at-Arms
c.16.00: Thanks and Close
About Dr Tobias Capwell
Tobias Capwell is Curator of Arms and Armour at the Wallace Collection in London, Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and an internationally-acknowledged expert on Medieval and Renaissance weapons. His book, Masterpieces of European Arms and Armour at the Wallace Collection (The Wallace Collection 2011) was named Book of the Year by Apollo Magazine in 2012.
Dr Capwell appears regularly on television, most recently as presenter and armour advisor on Richard III: The New Evidence (Channel 4, 2014), and as the writer and presenter of Metalworks: The Knight’s Tale (BBC 4, 2012). Recent publications include The Noble Art of the Sword: Fashion and Fencing in Renaissance Europe 1520-1630, (The Wallace Collection 2012) and ‘The Arming of an English Man-at-Arms, c. 1415’, appendix, in Sir Ranulph Fiennes’s new book Agincourt: My Family, The Battle, and the Fight for France (Hodder & Stoughton 2014).
After fifteen years of research, Dr Capwell’s book Armour of the English Knight 1400-50 will be published in the summer of 2015; it will be the first of three volumes exploring the story of armour in late medieval England.
Some Suggestions for Optional Background Reading
Barker, Juliet, Agincourt: The King, the Campaign, the Battle (London: Little, Brown, 2007)
Capwell, T., Armour of the English Knight 1400-50 (London: Thomas Del Mar, 2015)
Curry, Anne, ed, The Battle of Agincourt: Sources and Interpretations (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2000)
Curry, Anne, Agincourt: A New History (Stroud: Tempus, 2005)
Fiennes, Ranulph, Agincourt: My Family, the Battle and the Fight for France (London: Hodder, 2014)
Hibbert, Christopher, Agincourt (New York: Dorset, 1978)
Seward, Desmond, Henry V as Warlord (London: Thistle, 2013)
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