Arranged thematically, this historical survey begins by tracing the growth of dynasties and empires, from the Carolingians to the Ottomans. Further sections cover warfare and conquest (in particular the Crusades and the Hundred Years’ War), as well as daily life under the feudal system and developments in religion and culture. Also featured are photographs of medieval maps, artworks and significant documents such as Magna Carta and Joan of Arc’s final letter. Includes material previously published in The Middle Ages.

Arguing that the Normans’ imposition of a feudal system significantly reduced women’s rights and status, Telford uses a range of evidence from legal records to chart the struggles of ordinary women against the hypocritical sexual politics of medieval England. She considers such subjects as the pressure on young women to marry and bear children, the difficulty of legally ending an unhappy marriage, the special challenges faced by widows and the law’s attitudes to prostitution. Foreword by John Ashdown-Hill.

‘A remarkable and successful king of the Anglo-Saxons’, but overshadowed by the illustrious reputation of his father, Alfred the Great, Edward the Elder reigned between 899 and 924 and was pivotal in the transformation of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms into a recognizable, unified English nation state which his son Æthelstan developed further. Drawing on tenth-century sources, Michael John Key gives an assessment of the reign and, as far as possible, an account of Edward’s early life and kingship in Anglo-Saxon Wessex.

Between the Romans’ departure from Britain and the Norman Conquest, a distinct English identity developed, the legacy of which is still felt today. As Hindley tells the story of Anglo-Saxon England he highlights its cultural glories, such as Beowulf and the Lindisfarne Gospels, and its powerful women, from the war leader Æthelflæd to the abbess Hilda. He also shows how the centralized English bureaucracy helped create Europe’s first true ‘nation’.

Did the Normans bring civilization to England and enable stronger links with continental Europe? Was William’s victory the result of supreme strategy – or just luck? As new discoveries have cast doubt on the traditional picture of 1066, Cole reassesses the evidence for the Conquest and its effects. Explaining the background to the invasion, she highlights the long development of English relations with Normans and Scandinavians; describing the aftermath, she considers how the conquerors crushed resistance and exploited the kingdom’s riches.

From his birth in Bordeaux in 1367 and early years in Aquitaine, to his deposition by Henry of Lancaster in 1399 and his death, a few months later, in Pontefract Castle, this biography of Richard II is intended as a portrait of an individual rather than an account of his reign. It is, nevertheless, a very complete study that reassesses Richard’s reputation as a crazed and vicious ruler, and depicts a complex and conflicted man thrust into a role that demanded greatness.

In 1411, the ageing Donald of Islay, Lord of the Isles, invaded mainland Scotland with a huge, battle-hardened army, only to be fought to a standstill on the plateau of Harlaw, 14 miles from Aberdeen. This great battle left around 3,000 dead or wounded, yet beyond Aberdeenshire, it has faded from historical memory. This book brings Donald’s invasion and Harlaw back into view, with translations of contemporary records and ballads, later historical accounts, and myths and legends of Harlaw.

A charismatic Plantagenet ruler, described by a contemporary as ‘the handsomest prince my eyes ever beheld’, Edward IV (1442–1483) fought hard for his crown, contesting some of the most important battles of the medieval period, including Mortimer’s Cross, Towton, Barnet and Tewkesbury. Covering Edward’s background, the Yorkist takeover and the tensions created by the king’s controversial Woodville marriage, this history follows his struggle to gain and regain the kingship of England during a period of great dynastic turmoil.

Taking its title from Henry VI's lament at the Battle of Towton in Shakespeare's play, this book examines Henry's disastrous reign and the personal failings of the king, then describes the events leading up to Towton and the battle itself – the first savage clash of arms between Lancastrians and Yorkists in the Wars of the Roses. In his introduction, David Starkey sketches the evolution of English kingship, providing the background to 1461.

The Plantagenet dynasty ruled medieval England during a period of immense socio-political change when the role of queen consorts was redefined. Indeed, as this book reveals, royal women played a significant role in the maintenance of the Plantagenets’ political power. Corvi focuses on ten influential figures from the period 1236–1485, such as the ‘She-Wolf’ Isabella of France, who deposed her husband Edward II, and Margaret of Anjou, who was often in control of government during Henry VI’s bouts of madness.

Were the sons of Edward IV – the boy king Edward V and his younger brother, Richard, Duke of York – genuinely held against their will in the Tower of London; and were they murdered there? Bones found in the Tower were interred in Westminster Abbey in 1674, and their burial urn was opened in 1933. Now, drawing on genetic science, John Ashdown-Hill re-examines the case of the two princes, questioning the orthodox view and stripping away the myths that surround their fate.

In 1344, Edward III proposed forming a secular order of knights, the Order of the Round Table, and building a home for its gatherings. This book describes the archaeological evidence for that fabled Domus Rotunde Tabulae, unearthed by the BBC’s Time Team in 2006.

The 10 essays in this volume examine the 11th-century manuscript (Cotton Claudius B.iv.), confronting issues including authorship, audience, the composition of the Old English text, and Aelfric's Preface.

This collection of ten Studientage Englisches Mittelalter (SEM) essays in medieval English literature includes studies of monsters in Spenser’s Faerie Queene; treachery in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; Piers Plowman; and tensions between Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and the Clerk. English text.

By preaching in the open and visiting lay people at home, mendicant friars took religion outside church buildings. Yet, despite their dedication to apostolic poverty, the friars were criticized for their churches’ considerable size. In her study of the ‘social lives of buildings’, Bruzelius describes how friars’ activities shaped the interior and exterior spaces of medieval cities; in particular explaining how individual donors’ requests for intercessory prayers and burial rights led to the episodic expansion and decoration of the friars’ convents.

Presented in the original and in modern English translation, these 100 letters are drawn from two early 13th-century formularies (collections of model letters for instruction) and cover topics ranging from politics to family gossip.

The central and later Middle Ages were a critical formative period for the Italian peninsula, which lay at the centre of trading networks stretching from Britain to Byzantium. This volume’s 120 newly translated sources range in date from c.1000 to the early 15th century. They illustrate the cultural, ethnic and religious diversity of medieval Italy, highlighting both its continuities with the Latin West and the ways in which it was exceptional, such as its new communal forms of government.

Published in the Aspilogia series, this volume presents, with annotations and analysis, editions of three of the oldest documents of English heraldry: The Matthew Paris Shields (c.1244–59), Glover’s Roll (c.1253–8) and Walford’s Roll (c.1273). No jacket.

The Wars of the Roses that convulsed 15th-century England sprang from a family quarrel as fraught and intimate as any before or since. It is often viewed in terms of its male protagonists but, as this rich, epic history makes clear, women played a key role, among them the Yorkist matriarch Cecily Neville; Margaret of Anjou, formidable wife of the mad King Henry VI; and Margaret Beaufort, whose ambition for her son ushered in the Tudor dynasty.

The illegitimate son of Lorenzo II and a maidservant, Alessandro de’ Medici ruled Florence for six turbulent years until he was assassinated in 1537. This first complete account of his life charts the rise through the intrigue-ridden courts of Renaissance Italy of the model for Machiavelli’s Prince, assesses the qualities of a ruler branded a tyrant by his enemies after his death, and considers the possible ethnic origins of this ‘first European ruler of colour’.

On the death of Richard I in 1199, his brother John took possession of the vast Angevin lands in England and France. By the time of his own death in 1215, King John had lost control of the continental lordships, England was facing invasion, and his English subjects had confronted him with the Magna Carta. Church's study of John approaches the king as a man ill-suited to his position of power, who came to be seen by his contemporaries as a tyrant.

Although there are many books on castles, few place them within the context of military history in general. Dan Spencer fills that gap by exploring the central role played by castles in the conflicts, civil wars and rebellions of the Middle Ages. As well as discussing dramatic events such as the sieges of Rochester and Kenilworth, he traces how castle architecture and military technology changed between the coming of the Normans and the death of Henry VIII.

Inheriting his dukedom at the age of four, Richard, 3rd Duke of York, became the wealthiest man in England at 13 and later rebelled against his king. Although remembered as the man who ignited the Wars of the Roses, the Duke has been largely eclipsed by his sons, Edward IV and Richard III. Lewis's biography challenges the myth of the Duke as a man of insatiable ambition who dragged a nation into civil war, and reveals a family man, yet one with unparalleled power and responsibilities.

This illustrated guide to English medieval murals explores their purpose, status, characteristics and subject matter, and lists churches and cathedrals where examples in differing states of repair can be found.

Kathryn Warner, the biographer of Edward II, presents a compelling life of his wife Isabella of France, sister to the French king Charles IV, and one of the most notorious women in English history. Warner sets aside the stereotype of the 'she-wolf' to give a neutral study of the queen who rebelled. In 1326 Isabella, with her lover Roger Mortimer, forced Edward's abdication and ruled as regent to her son, Edward III, until her own deposition in 1330.

In a fresh account of Bannockburn, Cornell places the battle ‘within its wider context as a phenomenon inextricably linked to the political events within Scotland and England in this period’. He examines the internal conflicts in both countries, the leadership of Robert Bruce and that of England’s Edward II and his generals in a thorough reappraisal of why the battle occurred, how it unfolded and how the Scots achieved their extraordinary against-the-odds victory.

In this vivid narrative history Kostick retells the events that unfolded following the arrival of a Christian army at Jerusalem in June 1099. He also sets this siege and the brutal sack of the city against the wider background of the First Crusade, following the crusaders on their march towards Jerusalem, highlighting tensions and factions among their ranks and assessing both the immediate aftermath and the longer-term legacy for the Crusade's leaders.

St Edmund’s Abbey, one of the country’s wealthiest religious houses, was closely involved with the central government of medieval England. This history, which covers the rule of two 13th-century abbots, uses evidence from the abbey’s extensive surviving records to provide insights into its governance and economy in difficult times as well as its religious, intellectual and cultural life. The monks’ dietary regime is examined in an appendix featuring recipes from the archives.

From the middle of the twelfth century, the seven liberal arts of medieval education – grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy – appeared in allegorical personifications on church facades. In this study, Cleaver explores the relationship between the ideas of the patrons and the practical knowledge of the sculptors of these images, addressing questions of iconography, function, audience and patronage.

Who were the Templars? Were they guardians of the Holy Grail? Did they travel to America before Columbus? This illustrated introduction to the order’s history chronicles its rise and fall, highlighting the knights’ role as warrior-monks and their prolific building activities during two centuries of Crusades, as well as their enduring legacy and the myths and superstitions that have grown up around them.

Sharon Bennett Connolly offers a new approach to the male-dominated history of 1066 and its cataclysmic events. She draws on the chronicles of those times to reconstruct the lives of the women who played significant roles in the years that led up to the Conquest and in its aftermath: among them, Emma of Normandy, queen of both Aethelred II and Cnut; Edward the Confessor’s queen, Edith of Wessex; William the Conqueror’s Matilda; and Margaret, the sainted Queen of Scotland.

The history of the Normans began a long time before William the Conqueror arrived in England in 1066. In this absorbing and accessible introduction, Professor Neveux describes the 'extraordinary Norman adventure' that changed the landscape and culture of Europe, from the first Viking raids of the eighth century to the defeat of the Normans in Sicily in the mid 13th century. Translated by Howard Curtis.

Agincourt is one of the most celebrated battles in English history, a victory that made Henry V a national hero and still resonates six centuries later. This title peels away the layers of myth to tell the human story through the eyes of key participants, from the king himself to a Somerset squire and an archer from Dorset. Drawing on historic accounts, it assesses the casualties and discusses the massacre of French prisoners that shocked contemporaries.

After a brief history of the ‘Viking Age’, which saw the movement of peoples from Scandinavia to the British Isles, Eleanor Parker turns to medieval chronicles and legends about the Vikings or ‘Danes’. Although the medieval narratives often portray the Scandinavians as raiders whose purpose was plunder and destruction, Parker’s close study of the stories reveals other motives – including participation in English politics and the need to settle – and she traces the positive Viking contribution to culture and identity in England.

William Marshal (1147–1219) was the Lancelot of his era – a landless younger son who rose through the ranks to serve as right-hand man to five English monarchs, including Richard the Lionheart and his brother John. Drawing on contemporary evidence, including the sole surviving copy of a 13th-century biography, this compelling study resurrects a courageous warrior, tournament champion, wily politician and, ultimately, regent of the realm, against a rich tapestry of chivalry, grandeur and barbarity.

The focus of these eleven essays is the complex relationship between masculinity and religion, with topics ranging widely to include studies of the rabbis of Babylonian Talmud; narratives of the First Crusade; and why men became monks in late medieval England.

In this study of food and drink, whether in the pauper’s bowl or on the elite table, and what it meant to people in the Middle Ages, Professor Woolgar shows how eating and drinking mattered for a multitude of reasons beyond simple sustenance. Drawing on a wide range of sources, the book looks at how food was acquired, cooked and eaten in the main social groups of late medieval England, and uses the cultures of food to open new perspectives on daily life.

The Third Crusade united European leaders in an expedition to reclaim the Holy Land from Saladin. It is particularly well-documented, with contemporary chronicles surviving from both sides of the conflict, some of which were written by men present in the region. First published in 1889, this compilation of translated sources juxtaposes accounts by different authors and illustrates how events such as the siege of Acre were viewed at the time.

The Coptic Monastery of St Paul grew up around the cave near the Red Sea where Paul, the first Christian hermit, lived in solitude. A shrine in late antiquity, the cave became a church in medieval times and was decorated with wall paintings in the 13th century. This richly illustrated volume records the work of the American Research Center in Egypt in conserving the paintings, and sets the Coptic art and architecture of the church in historical and spiritual context.

Taking the reader on 20 ‘walks’ around the Vatican, a former Prefect of the Papal Household draws attention to the City State’s abundant examples of armorial devices relating to popes from Eugene IV to John Paul II. The text, which is illustrated with hundreds of photographs, explains the significance of the coats of arms, inscriptions and other decorative features of the Vatican’s buildings, while also forming a brief history of 55 pontificates. Captions in English, French and German.

Described by Lord Denning as ‘the greatest constitutional document of all times’, Magna Carta is widely seen as a guarantor of individual rights and freedom from tyranny. But how is a charter forced on a medieval king by his barons relevant today? This comprehensive, accessible and richly illustrated volume explains its origins, how it has been interpreted through the centuries, and the inspiration it provides to those wishing to build democratic societies across the world.

The Knights of the Order of the Temple of Solomon are found in fictional literature from the Middle Ages to Sir Walter Scott and beyond, even appearing in computer games. Nicholson separates the surviving historical evidence from speculative associations with Freemasonry, the Holy Grail and space travel: beginning with the Templars' origins during the Crusades she considers their religious life, their service to Europe's kings and their commercial and economic activities, up to the order's dissolution in 1312.

For much of the 14th and 15th centuries, England was almost continuously at war with its neighbours, and enjoyed an unprecedented degree of military supremacy in the region. Peter Reid's exhaustive account is not simply a catalogue of battles, but interweaves analysis of strategy and weaponry with a dramatic telling of how and why the wars, from Bannockburn to the Wars of the Roses, came about, and how they were fought.

This third book in O'Callaghan's trilogy about the struggle between Christianity and Islam on the Iberian Peninsula describes the reconquest of Spain by the Christian monarchs, from the middle of the 14th century to the final efforts of Fernando and Isabel – a military offensive, accorded the status of a crusade by the Papacy, that forced the capitulation of Granada in 1492.

Simon Barton investigates the political and cultural significance of marriages and other sexual encounters between Christians and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula, from the Islamic conquest in the early eighth century to the fall of Granada and the end of Muslim rule in 1492.

In this study of Middle English texts on the 'art of dying', including the Visitation of the Sick, Erasmus' Preparation to Death and Lydgate's Dance of Death, Appleford shows that an educated awareness of death and mortality was a vital aspect of medieval civic culture.

Francis Young, himself at the forefront of the search to locate the lost coffin of King Edmund, tells the story of the historical search for the real man behind the legendary East Anglian king killed by the Vikings in 869. The book traces Edmund’s progress from martyred king to England’s national saint in medieval times; and describes current research into Edmund’s burial in the abbey at Bury St Edmunds and the present whereabouts of his mortal remains.

At the accession of Henry II in 1154, the Plantagenets ruled over a realm that stretched from the Scottish borders to the Pyrenees. When Richard III died in 1485, only Calais was left on the European mainland, but the Plantagenets had consolidated and secured royal control within Britain. In this lucid account of their 300-year reign, Wilson chronicles the turbulent and often blood-soaked world of kings such as Richard the Lionheart, King John and Henry V, the hero of Agincourt.