Every generation has its Robin Hood. Errol Flynn, Kevin Costner and Russell Crowe are just a few to immortalise the folklore hero on screen, and ballads, songs, plays, pantomimes and books have also made Britain’s favourite outlaw world-famous.
The tales are simple enough: of an age-old fight against injustice. The usurper, wicked King John, a hated, real-life monarch, suppresses his subjects while King Richard is away fighting the Crusades. John’s henchmen, Guy of Gisborne and the dastardly Sheriff of Nottingham, are taxing the poor to extinction with only the guerrilla campaign of crack–archer Robin and his Merry Men to stop them.
Robin Hood’s first mention by name is a throwaway reference in the Middle English poem Piers Plowman, written around 1377, which implies the tales were already well known. From…