A new book by French journalist Marcel Gay claims to prove that Joan of Arc was a French royal who did not die on the stake but was rescued by the English.

In L'Affaire Jeanne d'Arc, the peasant girl was really "the illegitimate daughter of the French queen consort, Isabeau of Bavaria, who groomed her for use as a political puppet."

Claims made in the book have angered French historians. "These theories have been knocked down 100 times. This is about people who are not historians, who don't understand the mentality of the Middle Ages, looking for a contemporary explanation. It shows there is a clear market of readers who aren't satisfied with what history tells us, otherwise these books would never be published," said Olivier Bouzy, a medieval historian and co-director of the Joan of Arc centre in Orléans.