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 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.

Appearances

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You're Dead to Me · Geoffrey Chaucer (Radio Edit) · 29 May 2026 podcast

Oh, I've loved it.

Thank you for having me.

You're Dead to Me · Geoffrey Chaucer: the medieval father of English literature · 27 Feb 2026 podcast

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, which is appropriate because that's where the wine comes in.

So Chaucer's born very near the river, and this is a huge time for mercantile trading.

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.

So he's living at the heart of mercantile life.

So we think of him as a middle class kind of boy.

Chaucer was living in this very multilingual, cosmopolitan kind of area.

You know, people often think of the Middle Ages as people are kind of grubbing about.

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