Dr James Turner attended the University of Glasgow before undertaking his doctoral studies at Durham University. Deeply afraid of numbers and palaeography, his main research interests surround medieval aristocratic culture and identity. Over the last few years he has been increasingly fascinated by medieval globalism. James is the author of The Royal Bastards of Twelfth Century England: Power and Blood. A strong advocate of the need to make history increasingly accessible to the public has written a number of articles on topics such as the trans-cultural nature of Harald Hardrada's travels and the long history of the political motivated repurposing of Arthurian Romance literature. He lives and works near a beach in South Ayrshire.