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This week YPOMPOD is joined by Alice Loxton — History Alice to her many followers — to discuss the extraordinary series of crosses that King Edward I built in memory of his queen, Eleanor of Castile in the 1290s. Eleanor died in Lincolnshire. Her body was then carried back to London for burial, and at every place that the cortège stopped a beautiful cross was erected.

The work of the royal masons, these crosses are of astonishing quality even though some stand in what are now modest situations. The best-preserved is at Geddington in Northamptonshire, which Alice visits with Clive and John. It provides a fascinating window through which to view the Middle Ages. Alice describes her walk along the route of the crosses, the subject of her new book Eleanor, to John, a medievalist, and Clive, who used to have a cottage within the shadow of the Geddington cross.