Professor Marion Turner

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

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And the role of women is really important.

So John later, after Blanche's death, and Blanche's death was the occasion of Chaucer's first poem that we know about.

The Book of the Duchess was about Blanche's death.

John then made another important marriage to someone called Constance of Castile, the daughter of the king of Castile.

But the person he loved was Catherine Swinford.

Catherine Swinford was Chaucer's sister-in-law.

Yes, Philippa's sister, Catherine, who had been married to Swinford, who was a retainer of John of Gaunt.

After Swinford died, we think after he died, John of Gaunt and Catherine started a long, long relationship.

So she was his mistress for 20 years.

They had four illegitimate children.

And then right towards the end of Gaunt's life, late 1390s, he married his mistress.

Now, no one did that.

Dukes did not do that.

Marries his mistress, who's relatively unimportant.

They've got four illegitimate children.

He gets the children retrospectively legitimated.

But Parliament put in a clause saying that they could never use that legitimation to give them a right to the throne.

Nonetheless, all of our monarchs since Henry VII only have a right to the throne through those children, the Beaufort.

Okay.

So Chaucer was connected with John of Gaunt, you know, partly on his own merits.

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