From mid-June, Jamie Theakston will be presenting the fourth series of Forbidden History on UKTV’s Yesterday Channel and on Discovery AHC in the autumn. The fourth programme in this series will be The Dark Truths of the Templars and yours truly will be appearing as a contributor.
Jamie and the team landed in my study a few months back and we discussed all things Templar for a couple of hours. It’s been in post-production ever since but excitingly is now ready to broadcast.
I haven’t seen the finished programme but issues we covered included:
- How did an order of monastic knights pledged to vow of poverty become so hugely rich?
- What could have been the real reasons for the formation of the Knights Templar in 1118?
- The connections between the order’s founders and some very wealth and influential people
- Why did the Templars base themselves on the Temple mount in Jerusalem and what were they doing there?
- The salacious charges brought against the Knights Templar during their trial
- Did the secular powers, kings and pope, manage to seize all their treasure or did they escape with some of it?
- What do we make of persistent accusations that the Templars were influenced in their rites by pre-Christian and non-Christian ideas?
Do feed back to me what you think. There will be other TV appearances later in the year and I’ll keep you posted. Make sure all your Templar fans and friends are watching!