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Ian Mortimer |
What was New in 2025?
22 December 2025 A new podcast interview with me went live today - entitled 'When was the best time in English history to be alive?' It can be accessed here. 14 December 2025 Regular readers will know that evey year I write a bit of nonsense to be my Christmas card. I've been doing it now for over thirty years. This year's effort, entitled 'ChatDDT', is now available along with all the other Christmas poems. 14 November 2025 Last Autumn (2024) I did a talk for the Historical Novels Society about information and factuality. This year I've written a concise version of it for the Historical Novels Review, published by the Society, entitled 'Free History - How to Ride the Waves of Time'. Subscribers can now read it online as well as in the printed version. 6 November 2025 A podcast interview to launch my new book, Mortimer's A-Zs of English History. Click on the title above. 21 October 2025 Today is the official publication day for my new book, Mortimer's A-Zs of English History. It's based on my Time Traveller's Guides but extended to look at the significance of seeing the past up close and personal across several separate time periods. You can read more about it here. Alternatively, follow this link to see the artist James Nunn talk about illustrating and typesetting it in an Instagram post. 19 October 2025 Four years ago my wife and I set out to see every pub in England that either is medieval (pre-1500, in this context) or claims to be. We finished the day before yesterday, at the Black Lion in Little Walsingham. (Ironically, although listed as partly medieval, that one has been cut in two and the medieval part is now private accommodation.) Along the way we have visited 953 establishments and considered a further 286, making a total of 1,239 hostelries. We have considered the merits of them all, as well as the veracity of their claims to great antiquity. The quest has taken us to every county except Rutland (which has no medieval pubs). In some counties more than 90 per cent of pubs are exaggerating their age; in others, less than 20 per cent are. In one county the average level of exaggeration is more than 400 years; in another, on average, the landlords underestimate the antiquity of their establishments. Amazingly, new treasures kept appearing, even to the last day. Below is a snap of the medieval hall of the Lattice House in King's Lynn, which was built in the fifteenth century and became an inn some time before 1714. It has been the most amazing study, and I can't wait to finish writing it all up for publication. 27 September 2025 A real pleasure yesterday to do an illustrated talk at the Drewe Arms in Drewsteignton, a community-owned pub, on the theme of 'Medieval pubs in the Southwest of England: the oldest, the genuine and the tall-tale-tellers'. I followed it up with a short history of the Drewe itself. Not a medieval pub but a seventeenth-century one that has all the good qualities of an ancient building - including a tap room rather than a bar. 20 September 2025 Although my new book Mortimer's A-Zs of English History will not be published until 21 October, and the official launch will not be until the 24th, I did a preview talk yesterday at the Gloucester festival. A lovely experience, as always at this well-run event. Except that I left my keys in the car ignition and thus returned to it at 10pm to find I had a flat battery. Never mind, the organisers even sorted that out too.
29 August 2025 Copies of my new book have landed on my desk, Mortimer's A-Zs of English History, which is very satisfying. Information about it can be found on this page. The official publication date is 21 October and the official launch event will be in Bovey Tracey, Devon, on Friday 24 October. (See the Bovey Paradiso website for further details.) 26 August 2025 I have written a short piece about my aunt, the 1961 Wimbledon Ladies' Singles champion, Angela Mortimer MBE, who died yesterday morning. It appears on my Notes & Essays page. 13 August 2025 My wife recently put a technical question to ChatGPT. It provided a hallucination in response. This was not a matter of opinion but a limited, well-defined and specific question. ChatGPT invented a medieval building, its name, its location and its dendrochronological date. And told us it was 'well-documented' when in fact it did not exist. Read this article and you will see why you cannot trust AI in its current form. 12 August 2025 In early August my wife and I completed our penultimate tour looking at all the pubs in England that either are, or claim to be, medieval. We visited eighty-two pubs in Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Camridgeshire and Suffolk; we also went to eight we had missed in Essex and three in the St Albans area. The whole trip was memorable but I have to say the quality of the buildings simply got better and better as we went eastwards (due to the wealth of the counties in question in the Middle Ages). Buckinghamshire offered few delights, Bedfordshire even fewer, but Huntingdonshire contained several, Cambridgeshire more and Suffolk loads. The moulded beams in the Lion in Buckden, for example, caught my eye in Huntingdonshire: And there were even better carved beams from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century in the Red Lion, beside the station in Whittlesford, Cambridgeshire: But then we discovered picture-postcard timber framing at Barrington, Cambrdigeshire: And in Suffolk, pubs like the Bell in Kersey are so attractive they make you want to move to the village: The oldest remains were undoubtedly the thirteenth-century vaulted cellars of the Angel in Bury St Edmunds: All of which nbow leaves just one more trip, by which time we shall have considered the historical and architectural merits of almost 1,200 pubs, and have visited more than 950 of them.
30 July 2025 I have recently been asked several times what I am currently working on. I have therefore updated the page in which I share information about forthcoming and future books. Click this link to find out more.
7 July 2025 Yesterday was Moretonhampstead Music Day - the annual opportunity for those in the Moreton area to show off their musical skills - however modest they might be. Great fun all round. I was joined on stage in the White Hart by Matt Jackson (cajon), Jon Lee (guitar), Alfie Fell (guitar), Emily Urquhart (vocals) and my son Alexander (double bass and bass guitar).
Here are a couple of clips from our set - 'I will survive' (Gloria Gaynor) and one of my own songs, 'The Guilty Party'.
1 July 2025 I am very proud to say that the good folk who run Bovey Paradiso - a community arts centre created out of the disused sixteenth-century King of Prussia pub in Bovey Tracey - have appointed me their Patron of History and Heritage. It hardly needs saying that this is both a privilege and an honour. But for me, it is much more besides. For a number of years now I have taken an interest in the history of old pubs, and over the last four years I have visited almost a thousand of them with a heritage hat on. Sadly, as we all know, they are closing in great numbers. This is not just a problem in respect of losing businesses (as the people in Whitehall seem to think); communities are losing their centres, community heritage is being boarded up and neglected, people are losing their contact with each other, society is becoming more individualised and individuals are becoming more isolated. Too often what was once a place of laughter and ‘good fellowship’ (to use the Elizabethan term for alehouse culture) is turned into a block of one-bedroom flats. So I have also taken a great interest in attempts by communities to redress the balance and to safeguard their old pubs as cultural centres. Sometimes this means them buying their local hostelry and running it themselves. But the Bovey Paradiso project is a step ahead of anything else I have come across: creating a new, bigger centre for all the arts, for people to come together, and be enthused, informed, educated and entertained. It is a magnificent phoenix from the ashes of the old King of Prussia, and an example of what is possible in other places too. This is why it is such a privilege for me to be involved. It is so much more than an ‘alternative use’ for an old building: the Bovey Paradiso project is a beacon of hope for the whole of society.
26 June 2025 Last Thursday my wife and I set off to visit two-dozen old pubs in the county of Warwickshire as part of our tour of all the oldest hostelries in the country. This was the first time we had been on a 'pub safari' since last autumn, and as we're nearing the end of the project now (having already visited over 1,000 pubs), we were very keen to be on the road again. Don't misunderstand: these 'safaris' are hard work. They are certainly not an excuse to knock back a few pints. You can't drink a pint of beer in every pub when visiting eight or more establishments every day and driving between them all, and having to photograph all the heritage features visible to the public. I drink a lot of black coffee, cider shandy, Guinness Zero and J20s along the way. But these trips are great fun and a marvellous way to see the whole country - every county, every class, urban and rural - as well as to explore our drinking heritage. Our favourite pub of the trip was, much to our surprise, in Coventry. The Old Windmill in Spon Street. It is listed as fifteenth-century, claims that date, but has a wealth of nineteenth-century features that make it special. I particularly liked the small old rooms. Pubs that 'modernise' by ripping out their internal walls to create vast spaces for drinkers tend to destroy their historic character, charm and atmosphere at the same time. Long may the Old Windmill stay just as it is. Unfortunately our luck - and the fun - ran out at 3:45 on Friday, as we drove away from a car park in Warwick. The car stalled. It did not restart. Nothing wrong with the battery. It seemed to be either the starter motor or the alternator. A helpful PCSO organised some noble passers-by to help push it uphill, despite it weighing 1.7 tonnes, but it got stuck on a kerb, jutting out into the carriageway of a roundabout. There it stayed, hazard lights on while I contacted the RAC...
Things quickly went from bad to worse. When I contacted the RAC machine at 3:55, it informed me that we would be waiting between 4 and 7 hours for assistance. Of course, such times are merely estimates. Surely they wouldn't take that long? I informed the system that we had been asked by the police to move the car as quickly as possible as it was not safe. So we waited. It grew dark. And then the RAC machine told us we would not receive any assistance until between midnight and 3am - more than eight hours after I reported the breakdown. At which point we despaired and told the RAC - who had not phoned us to explain why it was taking so long - that we would not wait beyond midnight. They promised to get someone to us by 1am. But by this time the electrical system was dead, drained (presumably) by the hazard lights being left on and having to charge our phones to receive updates from the RAC (not that any arrived). A police car came along and we agreed to let them drag the car to a safe space. But because the electrics were shot, the parking brake was now seized on. So the police dragged it with its rear wheels rigidly fixed, wrecking two perfectly good new tyres in the process. We took a taxi to our hotel in Stratford-upon-Avon and hired a car. Only for the RAC to have the cheek to tell us we would not be fully reimbursed. It made us both very angry. What had we done wrong, to incur this penalty? Had the RAC done their job properly, the electrics would not have failed, the parking brake would not have seized, the tyres would not have been wrecked, and so on. As it was, they had to relay the car back to Devon, 170 miles. That might not have been necessary if they had responded more promptly. The organisation is abysmal - run by people who have no interest in anything but minimising the cost of their service. On a more positive note, the people of Warwick were lovely to us. Every neighbour offered us the use of their loo, glasses of water, cups of tea and coffee, or just enquired after our well-being. Michelle, the PCSO who initially helped us, came by at the end of her shift to find out how we were doing. Blessings upon her and all those who helped us. And cursed be the useless bureaucrats of the RAC.
12 June 2025 Proofs of the forthcoming book, due to be published on 21 October, have gone back to the publisher. So, to mark the occasion, here's a picture of my study as I finished the job. Why not tidy up first? Many years ago, my late, much-missed cousin, the artist Stephen Read, won a scholarship to an American university with a painting of his bedroom just after he had got up. His mother said to him, indignantly, when she saw the painting, 'Stephen, you could have made your bed first, before painting it'. Like Stephen, I value the reality of how we live, not the artificiality of the pristine show.
25 May 2025 Ever so slowly, I am regaining a little fitness. At the Brighton Half Marathon on 2 March, I had to stop five or six times, even though it is a flat course. I had never taken more than 2 hours to do the distance but, that day, it took me 2:04. As a result, I resolved to run a minimum of 8K per day for all of April and built up the distances in May. I thus enjoyed running the Great West Run today, my thirty-second half marathon (not including 2 full marathons). Although slow (17 minutes outside my best time), I was pleased to run negative splits on a course with a hill in the second half. Best of all was running with my brother, Robbie, and his son, Tom, and a friend of my daughter's, Shan, doing her first half marathon. I have already entered for next year, when I hope to be fitter and running faster.
19 May 2025 I’ve been to Dart Music Festival before but this was the first time I’ve sponsored the event. And what an event it turned out to be. The weather was spectacular, and Dartmouth always looks so fine when the sun is playing on the water. I saw a shedload of bands: Becky Brine in the 1620 Cocktail Bar; Riviera Dogs, Foreign Affairs, Duncan Disorderly, Willie & the Bandits, and Grizzly & the Grasshoppers on the main stage; Ophelia’s Beard in the marketplace; Montgomery Slacks, and The Flamenco Thief in the Guildhall; Nick the Fish and Damian Corbett by Bayard’s Castle; Joe Dostal at the Marina Hotel; the Lyric Chamber Orchestra at the church; and Cooper & Davies outside the Crab. All a very high standard. The Lyric Chamber Orchestra were advertised as playing Haydn’s Cello Concerto no. 1 – which they did exceptionally well – and a cello concerto by Vivaldi – which was replaced by Dvorak’s Serenade for Strings, which was amazing. But they prefaced it with playing a piece by Michael Tippett. Honestly, I do not understand why classical musicians do this. It’s not likely to appeal to the same sort of music lover. It’s rather like saying, yes, we’ll play you some Abba songs but first we’re going to force you to listen to some grime music. But having to endure Tippett was the only low point of the weekend. Having got that off my chest, there were so many high points. To pick out just three, Sophie and I were very impressed with Duncan Disorderly, who play a riotous set - a bit of reggae, a little ska, a chunk of rock and a slice of Latin – which is a little reminiscent of Manu Chao, as this clip perhaps illustrates: I loved the blues-rock outfit Montgomery Slacks from Nottingham. The female lead singer knocked me sideways: and last but by no means the least of the three, there was a fantastic performance from the mild, unassuming The Flamenco Thief, aka Craig Sutton, from Wiltshire. I was so impressed by this clip I uploaded it to Youtube: Will I sponsor again next year? The only thing that will stop me is people not buying my books.
14 May 2025 It’s taken a while but Through the Windows of an Ordinary House: a History of England is completed in draft and handed over to the editor. Checking my records, I see I wrote the start of the Introduction on 13 June 2020. One month short of five years ago. Other things have intervened along the way. Now there only remains the not inconsiderable matter of cutting about 50,000 words to bring it down to size. Fortunately that’s a task I share with my editor.
28 April 2025 I know, I know. This is lamentable. I have not updated this page all year, and we're almost a third of the way through. I apologise. So what have I been up to instead? I have been working around the clock on my forthcoming book, The History of England through the Windows of an Ordinary House, which I have to say has been a compelling study, so surprising. I have also been preparing for the recent talk I gave to Gloucester History Festival's spring weekend, on 'The Fake Death of Edward II'. That took a fair bit of prparation. My wife said to me, 'you going to Gloucester to about the fake death of Edward II, when he is buried there, is like going into the lion's den.' 'Absolutely,' I replied, 'and wholly fitting when I'm the lion'. So I needed to preen my whiskers and sharpen my claws, just in case. Below is a snap of me talking at that event. I believe the talk is still available online for a week or so. I will start work on a book on the subject later this year. In the meantime, until 25 May you can view a stream of this talk by way of a digital pass. See this page for details. I have done a couple of podcasts recently for 'History Rage' (about the poor standards of methodology in English history, including in academic circles) and 'History with Jackson' (about the fake death of Edward II, as a preliminary for my Gloucester talk).
Of course, I could not go to Gloucester and not say hello to the remains of Edward II in his stunning tomb. On the way back from Gloucester I did manage to find the time to drop by the excellent bar, the Sickle, in London Street, Bath, which is the brainchild of my eldest son. (I feel that that makes it my braingrandchild...) I have also been revising a book on in-depth historical methology that I wrote last year, How do you know what you think you know? On top of all that, I have been revising Mortimer's A-Zs of English History, which will be published this autumn. I was delighted to go along to the 'topping out' ceremony at Bovey Paradiso, the new arts centre in Bovey Tracey within the sixteenth-century building that used to be the King of Prussia pub. A real thrill that an old pub should be so successfully repurposed to community ends. And, as all that being stuck at my desk meant I put on about 12 kilos in weight and lost all my fitness, I resolved at the start of April to run 8km per day. I haven't lost much weight, nor have I gained much speed, but I have slept like a baby every night! To celebrate the fine weather for running, here is a picture of Dartmoor when it isn't raining.
15 January 2025 Totally involved in my new project, everything else is on hold. I always tell people that I work all the time that I am not doing something more interesting. Well, now that's absolutely true - except that not many things are more interesting than work these days. I did mean to pick up on social media and post more but frankly I just want to get on with writing The History of England through the Windows of an Ordinary House. Friends' and family members' birthdays aside, my study and library are my happy places at the moment. Even the pub is having to do without me.
History Extra podcast
Christmas poem for 2025
Article for the Historical Novels Review
The How to Academy podcast in which Vassili Christodoulou interviewed me about Mortimer's A-Zs of English History is now available online - for free!
Publication day for Mortimer's A-Zs of English History
Medieval pubs
Talks at the Drewe Arms
Gloucester History Festival
New book arrived!
Angela Mortimer
AI and the Degradation of Knowledge
Penultimate medieval pubs trip
Future Books page updated
Moretonhampstead Music Day
Patron of Bovey Paradiso
Tour of Warwickshire's old pubs - and a disaster
Mortimer's A-Zs of English History
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Great West Run
Dart Music Festival
New book finished in draft
Update
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