Especially for those of you outside of the UK who have never seen this series – it’s essential viewing.  Tony Robinson is something of a pop historian with a particular interest in what ordinary people were doing at different stages of history.  This is an episode of a series he made called ‘Worst Jobs in History’ where he focuses on the Middle Ages – it may alter your perceptions of that period.

One thing he illustrates is how unbelievably tedious the process of making chain mail was – the poor sods who had to hammer thousands upon thousands of rings together to make one chain mail suit.