‘BBC: The Templaaars!’

    

Last night, BBC 4’s In Our Time program reviewed the historic Knights Templar in a conversation among scholars who also refuted the notion, popular among some Freemasons, that the medieval warriors were the ancestors of Masonry.

It’s a sober-minded, authoritative, 50-minute finding of facts. (Keep listening beyond the host’s sign-off at 42 minutes.) Melvyn Bragg is joined by Jonathan Phillips, of the University of London; Helen Nicholson, of Cardiff University; and Mike Carr, of the University of Edinburgh.

The Masonic moment comes at 41 minutes, when Freemasonry’s templarphilia is laughed off as a “weird pseudo-history.”

The program’s webpage also gives a reading list of fourteen books. John J. Robinson did not make the grade.

Enjoy.