Outside of the realm of comedy, Jones was a prolific writer and history scholar, taking a particular interest in medieval British history. Taking a countercultural look at the Middle Ages, he produced a documentary series, Terry Jones’s Medieval Lives, in which he deconstructed commonly held beliefs about the backwards lifestyles of the people of the period, presenting them as more cultured and advanced than historians game them credit for. Another series, Terry Jones’s Barbarians, worked to contest the concept of savage, barbaric nations overrun conquered by the more civilized Roman Empire.

Over his career, Terry Jones authored dozens of novels, non-fiction books, plays, and television programs. In 2014, he reportedly noticed that he was having difficulty remembering his lines for a Monty Python reunion show, and the next year, he was diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia, an aggressive form of dementia. The affliction would eventually rob Jones of his ability to speak, or, as he put it in an article published by The Guardian, “my frontal lobe has absconded.” He is survived by his three children and his wife, Anna Söderström.