For 800 years, Magna Carta has inspired those prepared to face
torture, imprisonment and even death in the fight against tyranny. But
the belief that the Great Charter gave us such freedoms as democracy,
trial by jury and equality beneath the law has its roots in myth. Back
in 1215, when King John was forced to issue Magna Carta, it was regarded
as little more than a stalling tactic in the bloody conflict between
monarch and barons.
In Magna Carta: The Places that Shaped the Great Charter, Derek J.
Taylor embarks on a mission to uncover the 'golden thread of truth' that
runs through the story of the Great Charter, travelling to the palaces
and villages of medieval England, through the castles and towns of
France and the Middle East, to the United States of the twenty-first
century. The real history of Magna Carta is far more engaging, exciting
and surprising than any simple fairy tale of good defeating evil.