Stephen Church is a writer and professor of medieval history at the University of Lincoln^[1]] and is an expert on King John.^[2][3] In 2015 his book King John: England, Magna Carta, and the Making of a Tyrant was one of the Financial Times best books of the year.^[4]

Church is an expert in Medieval History, specifically the 12th Century^[5] and works at the University of Lincoln which he joined in 2023 after working for twenty-eight years at the University of East Anglia.^[6] He completed his postgraduate work in London. He is also a trustee of the Allen Brown Memorial Trust, where he organised the conference and edited the proceedings of Anglo-Norman Studies between 2020 and 2024.^[7] The Trust also gives conference bursaries for postgraduate students and sponsors sessions at other conferences and a postgraduate reading group.^[8][9]

He has written more than thirty articles edited seven collections of essays, two medieval documents, and written three monographs on a variety of topics to do with the period 1000 to 1300^[10] His most substantial works have been on the subject of King John and Magna Carta.^{[11][12][13][14]} Church has been regularly acknowledged as strong supporter of fellow Historians in their writing^[15][16][17] and has lectured in Europe on the subject of the Plantagenet Empire.^[18] In 2010 he co-led with Professor Elisabeth Tyler (University of York) two reading groups which aimed to read Orderic Vitalis's Historica ecclesiastica from start to finish and reflect on its content.^[19] In 2015 he appeared on Saturday Extra on Australian station ABC Radio with Nicholas Cowdery to discuss why does Magna Carta still matter,^[20] and co-presented the BBC programme The Last Journey of the Magna Carta King, part of the BBC Taking Liberties season, with archaeologist Dr Ben Robinson.^[21]

^[22]

• 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 - Anglo-Norman Studies, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46 ISSN 0954-9927
• 2017 – Henry III: A Simple and God-Fearing King ISBN 9780141977997
• 2015 – King John: England, Magna Carta, and the Making of a Tyrant ISBN 9780230772458
• 2015 – King John and the Road to Magna Carta ISBN 9780465092994
• 2007 – King John: New Interpretations ISBN 9780851159478
• 2007 – Dialogus de Scaccario, and Constitutio Domus Regis The Dialogue of the Exchequer, and The Disposition of the Royal Household (Oxford Medieval Texts) ISBN 9780199258611
• 2001 – The Pakenham Cartulary for the Manor of Ixworth Thorpe, Suffolk, c.1250-c.1320 (17) (Suffolk Charters) ISBN 9780851158358
• 1999 – The Household Knights of King John ISBN 9780521553193
• 1994 – Medieval Knighthood V (with Ruth Harvey) ISBN 9780851156286

• 2025 - 'Keeping up appearances: penance and peace-making in the Plantagenet family at the end of the "war without love", 1174-5', Studies in Renaissance and Medieval Sources, 4th series, 1 (2025), 99-137. (This is an open access article made available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International Licence.)
• 2022 - 'The "Angevin Empire" (1150-1204): A twelfth-century union', Unions and Divisions: New Forms of Rule in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, ed. Paul Srodecki, Norbert Kersken, and Rimvydas Petrauskas (Abingdon: Routledge, 2022), pp. 68–82.
• 2022 - 'Nobility and aristocracy' (with Daniel Booker) The Cambridge Companion to the Age of William the Conqueror, ed. Benjamin Pohl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), pp. 163–84.
• 2022 - 'Henri III et Le Maine' in Les Plantagenêts et Le Maine, ed. Martin Aurell, Ghislain Baury, Vincent Carriol, and Laurent Maillet (Rennes, France: University of Rennes Press, 2022), pp. 84–91
• 2021 - 'Jean sans Terre et le gouvernement par un étranger: l’exemple du Poitou', Gouverner l’empire Plantagenêt (1152-1224) Autorité, symboles, idéologie Collection Colloques Patrimoines en région, ed. Martin Aurell (Nantes, France: University of Nantes Press, 2021), pp. 312–25.
• 2020 - ‘The date and place of King John’s birth together with a codicil on his name', Notes & Queries, 67.3 (2020), 1-8.
• 2019 - 'When does advice become Criticism? Criticising John Lackland before Magna Carta', in Kritik am Herrscher, ed. Karina Kellerman and Alheydis Plassmann (Bonn: Bonn University Press, 2019), pp. 377-92.
• 2018 - ‘The dating and making of Magna Carta and the peace of June 1215’, in Staufen and Plantagenets: Two Empires in Comparison, ed. Alheydis Plassmann and Dominik Büschken (Bonn, Germany: Bonn University Press, 2018), pp. 53–69.
• 2018 - 'King John’s books, Richard Marsh, and the interdict proclaimed in 1208 on England and Wales’, in Writing History in the Anglo-Norman World: Manuscripts, Makers and Readers, c.1066-c.1250, ed. Laura Cleaver and Andrea Worm (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2018), pp. 149–65.
• 2017 – Political Discourse at the Court of Henry II and the Making of the New Kingdom of Ireland: The Evidence of John’s Title dominus Hibernie – History pg.808–823 ISSN 0018-2648
• 2010 – King John’s Testament and the Last Days of his Reign – English Historical Review pg.505–528 ISSN 1477-4534
• 2009 – The care of the royal tombs in English cathedrals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the case of the effigy of King John at Worcester – The Antiquaries Journal ISSN 1758-5309
• 2008 – Paganism in conversion age Anglo Saxon England: the evidence of Bede's Ecclesiastical History reconsidered – History pg.162–180 ISSN 1468-229X
• 2007 – Aspects of the royal itinerary in twelfth-century England – Thirteenth Century England pg.31–45 ISSN 0269-6967
• 1995 – The rewards of royal service in the household of King John: a dissenting opinion – English Historical Review pg.277–302 ISSN 1477-4534
• 1994 – The earliest English muster roll, 18/19 December 1215 – Historical Research pg.1–17 ISSN 1468-2281

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