A story. In summer 1976 he sat for several weeks in the manuscript room of the Bibliothèque nationale in the rue Richelieu in Paris, reading the Doat copies of the 13th century inquisition registers, and taking notes on those that were colourful and entertaining. The aim was to make a selection of them to translate for a Special Subject he was planning to put on for third year History undergraduates. Short of money as a junior lecturer, he was living on the top floor of a cheapo hotel in the rue du Temple in the Marais, which only cost 18 francs a night because the door would not close properly; food only of an evening, consumed in the hotel bedroom, tinned food, baguettes and wine in plastic bottles from Monoprix; entertainment confined to a free concert every Sunday evening at the Église Americaine.

So this is how it started. He took the notes, ordered the microfilms, translated the texts, and taught the Special Subject. And these were the roots of the extensive edition and translation of a register of records of interrogations by inquisitors in Toulouse from the 1270s-80s, preserved in later volumes of the Doat collection, which he produced together Caterina Bruschi and Shelagh Sneddon in 2011. As well as overseeing and directing the project, Pete is responsible for much of the historical introduction, co-supervising the PhD students, and identifying local place names.

He is one of the cooks on the project. Among the things he has written, he is fond of ‘The Abundance and Scarcity of Food in the Inquisition Registers of Languedoc’ (Cross, Crescent and Conversion: Studies on Medieval Spain in Memory of Richard Fletcher, ed. Simon Barton and Peter Linehan (Leiden and Boston 2008), pp. 263-76). If he was writing it now, the piece would have more on heretics and wine.