As I'm sure you're all dying to find out, #2 in that weird book of mine was "The Crusades and the Crusaders", as Christendom was overtaken by collective madness, seemingly inspired by a remarkably small number of people rushing about trying to retake the Holy Land.

Most of the attempts were disasters, not least the quite abysmal Children's Crusade, during one branch of which the third who survived to get to the south of France ended up all being sold into slavery and never saw either the Holy Land or home again. Now, how much of a lasting impact did all of this have? Well, fortunately there aren't any troubles in the middle east any more...

The book did skip the Albigensian crusade, my personal favourite, which involved the Pope turning Christendom's might on Languedoc France itself, with hilarious consequences. That should never be forgiven, if nothing else because eventually it led to Dan Brown writing the Da Vinci Code, a crime as yet unpunished.