An Historian Goes to the Movies

When I was 12, my mother and I developed a sort of ritual on Thursday nights. We would lie on my bed and watch PBS, which was mostly running British comedies like To the Manor Born. But one week, I think after the shows that we were watching, they ran The Lion in Winter (1968, dir. Anthony Harvey). My mom remembered having seen it, and so we watched it. I fell in love with it before it was done, and in some ways it is the thing that sparked my life-long fascination with the Middle Ages. It planted a seed that grew when I was in college and began studying history. It’s my all-time favorite movie, for reasons that are too numerous to count.

If you haven’t seen it, you should. It’s wonderful. The cast is great. Katherine Hepburn won an Oscar for her performance as the faded beauty…

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