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"Despite the quality of the primary sources, almost everything about Hastings is up for debate: the course of the action, the numbers on each side and, famously, whether or not Harold was killed by an arrow in the eye. As one of the foremost experts of the previous century, R. Allen Brown, once ruefully observed, sometimes the only certainty about Hastings seems to be that the Normans won."

"The idea that Medieval people drank beer or wine to avoid drinking bad water is so established that even some very serious scholars see no reason to document or defend it; they simply repeat it as a settled truth. In fact, if no one ever documents the idea, it is for a very simple reason: it's not true."

"There is perhaps no better medieval example of the phase 'Truth is in the eye of the beholder' than these two versions of the death of Simon de Montfort, the leader of the crusaders during the Albigensian Crusade. "