Professor Marion Turner
speaker
759 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2026
last heard 29 May
Professor Marion Turner’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Delighted to be here.
Thank you for inviting me.
Yeah, brilliant.
Yeah, so a wine merchant.
So his father was a vintner, is what we call them.
Well, Ian, which is a version of the name John, which is Chaucer's dad.
So John Chaucer, vintner, and Chaucer's mother was called Agnes.
Chaucer was born early 1340s.
We don't know the exact year, but about 1342.
Right.
In London, in Vintry Ward, so the ward which had lots of vintners in.
So it was one of the areas of London that is right next to the Thames.
So he's born in a place where he can see the ships coming in, loaded with products from all over the world, bringing spices from as far away as Indonesia, and then going out again laden with English wool, which was England's only real export product.
Chaucer was living in this very multilingual, cosmopolitan kind of area.
People often think of the Middle Ages as people are kind of grubbing about.
And of course, some people were.
But life in London was really international.
He was rubbing shoulders with people who spoke lots of different languages, were bringing in lots of luxury products.
Yeah, and to everyone.
So the Black Death.
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