Steve Tibble is a graduate of Cambridge and London Universities, and is a research associate at Royal Holloway College, University of London. He is one of the foremost academics currently working in the field of the crusades, and is the author of the warfare and strategy chapters in both ‘The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades’ and ‘The Cambridge History of the Crusades’ (2025).
His latest book, Crusader Criminals - The Knights Who Went Rogue in the Holy Land was published in the summer of 2023, and forms the basis of his talk at Shrewsbury. Steve will explore the criminal underbelly of the crusades, from gangsters and bandits to muggers and pirates. He will show how the real problem in the region stemmed not from religion but from young men. Dislocated, disinhibited, and present in disturbingly large numbers, they were the propellant that stoked two centuries of unceasing warfare and shocking levels of criminality.