Simon Winder's eclectic histories have ranged all over the Germanic countries, and he has concluded his Germania trilogy with Lotharingia, a book about the kingdom of Lothair, which was located mainly in the modern low countries, and stretched all the way to the Roman borderlands.

Lothair I, a grandson of Charlemagne ruled a kingdom sandwiched between the land that would become France under Charles the Bald, and the land that would become Germany under Louis the German.

Dan chats to Simon Winder about his tour of the region's eccentricities and how it served as the site of many bloody, protracted battles, from the War of the Spanish Succession to World War 1.

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Producer: Peter Curry

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