The language of sex and death, as Chaucer and others capture English speech of the time. Melvyn Bragg travels to the great mediaeval cathedral of Canterbury, with its shrine to the martyr, St Thomas à Becket. It inspired the pilgrims described by Geoffrey Chaucer in 1395 in 'The Canterbury Tales', as they set out from the Tabard Inn in Southwark. Chaucer decided to write in English, which was beginning to take over from the Norman French of court and government and the Latin of church and learning.
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