Ralph V. Turner

Ralph V. Turner was born on a plantation outside Forrest City, Arkansas, where he attended public schools. He was a history major at the University of Arkansas, where he took his BA and MA. Following graduation, he spent an academic year at Poitiers, France, as a Fulbright Scholar. That year was a life-changing experience, creating a thirst for travel,learning and the scholar's life that has never been quenched. On his return from France, he enrolled at the Johns Hopkins University, where he completed his doctorate in history in 1962, writing his thesis on the English royal courts of justice under King John and Henry III. A revised and expanded version was published as 'The King and his Courts' by Cornell University Press (1968). He joined the history faculty of the Florida State University at Tallahassee after leaving Johns Hopkins, and he spent most of his academic career there, continuing to do research and write on medieval English history, chiefly on the Angevin kings and their government. This interest led him to turn to study of Magna Carta and its impact on Anglo-American government and politics, 'Magna Carta through the Ages' (Pearson 2003). He became interested in writing collective biographies of royal administrators in 12th-century England, and later he tackled biographies of King John (Longman 1994; History Press 2009) of Richard Lionheart co-authored with his former student Richard R. Heiser(Pearson 2000). Yet his interest in French history and civilization remained strong, and he became more and more interested in the Angevin kings' French possessions, an interest whetted by his studies of Richard I and John. His year as a student at Poitiers had aroused a lifelong interest in Eleanor of Aquitaine, and after his retirement from teaching in 2000, he turned to uncovering a true image of that scandal-ridden queen in a new biography. It was published by Yale University Press in spring 2009.

Currently I am working on three projects that may or may not result in books: wet-nurses serving the children of English royalty in the 12th and 13th centuries, the bastards sired by King John, a biography of Isabelle of Angouleme, King John's wife.