Why have we forgotten the greatest of all crusaders?

For your perfect summer read I’d recommend Zoé Oldenbourg’s 1949 classic medieval adventure The World Is Not Enough. It’ll comfortably occupy you for a good fortnight and while it’s thrilling, romantic and heartbreaking enough to keep you turning the pages, it’s also so beautifully written and historically illuminating that you won’t feel the emptiness and self-disgust you do when you’ve finally got to the end of a bog-standard airport thriller.

It begins in 12th-century France but then moves to the wonderfully exotic-sounding Outremer, the contemporary name for the crusader states on the far side of the Med, such as the Principality of Antioch, the County of Tripoli and the Kingdom of Jerusalem. These were the destinations to which Europe’s warrior-pilgrims headed to purge themselves of their sins by bathing in Muslim blood and defending the cross.

Many, if not most, would die horribly — some with their severed heads tied to the spears of victorious Saracens, some in dungeons, some of dysentery or heatstroke.