Professor Laura Ashe is a historian of English medieval literature, history and culture . She lectures in English at Oxford University. At this point in his translation of the poem The Owl and the Nightingale, Simon Armitage invites Laura to help him with some of the final details . From the toilet habits of the nightingale to the Game of Thrones atmosphere of the period, from the hippy ideals of the nightingale to the tut-tutting of the buttoned up owl.