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Melvyn Bragg looks at the consequences of the agreement thrashed out between King John and his barons at Runnymede in the summer of 1215. Magna Carta, a charter settling a dispute between the king and a group of rebels, was agreed on June 19th. Yet within a few weeks the agreement had failed, and both sides disavowed it. So how did a failed peace treaty turn into the best known legal document in the English-speaking world? Melvyn Bragg looks at the complex politics of thirteenth-century England and discovers how John's Great Charter was revived and reinvented over the course of the next hundred years.

With: Louise Wilkinson, Professor of Medieval History at Canterbury Christ Church University; Cressida Williams, Cathedral and City Archivist at Canterbury Cathedral; David Carpenter, Professor of Medieval History at King's College London; Nicholas Vincent, Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia; and Claire Breay, Curator of the British Library's Magna Carta exhibition.

Producer: Thomas Morris.