English Medieval History

The tale of William the Conqueror is written down by numerous contemporaries with various perspectives. It's a tale that would inspire some, while fascinate and even terrify others. It’s a tale of a man from a seemingly small land rising to rule one of the most powerful, stable kingdoms in all of Europe at the time - a kingdom that would sow the seeds of an empire that would sprout many centuries later.

Among the finest poets of ancient Greece was Hesiod, a contemporary of Homer, who lived in the eighth century B.C. It is still a matter of dispute whether Homer or Hesiod was the earlier poet, and sometimes whether they were one and the same person! At any rate, Hesiod's incredible poetry serves as a major source for our understanding of Greek mythology, farming practices, time keeping and astronomy. In and of itself, the "Works and Days" is unparalleled in its richness and beauty, easily rivaling Homer.

It wasn't long-ago that Britons could have been as at home in Varanasi as they could have been in Wolverhampton—why?—because the shape and location of Britain's land-mass has not always been the same, and with large parts of Britain scattered across the globe, British borders and its identity has always been on the move. But, by knowing more about the twelve pivotal moments that occurred over a 2,000-year period, we can not only gain a full sense of our British history, but we can also understand where we are heading.

At the end of the fourth century, as the power of Rome faded and Constantinople became the seat of empire, a new capital city was rising in the West. Here, in Ravenna on the coast of Italy, Arian Goths and Catholic Romans competed to produce an unrivaled concentration of buildings and astonishing mosaics. For three centuries, the city attracted scholars, lawyers, craftsmen, and religious luminaries, becoming a true cultural and political capital.

Jewish Life in Medieval Spain is a detailed exploration of the Jewish experience in medieval Spain from the dawn of Sephardic society in the ninth century to the expulsion of 1492. An important contribution of the book is the integration of the rise and fall of Jewish life in Muslim al-Andalus into the history of the Jews in medieval Christian Spain. It traces the collapse of Jewish life in Muslim Spain, the emigration of Andalusi Jewry to the lands of Christian Iberia, and the difficult confluence of these two distinct Jewish subcultures.

Winters in the World is a beautifully observed journey through the cycle of the year in Anglo-Saxon England, exploring the festivals, customs, and traditions linked to the different seasons. Drawing on a wide variety of source material, including poetry, histories, and religious literature, Eleanor Parker investigates how Anglo-Saxons felt about the annual passing of the seasons and the profound relationship they saw between human life and the rhythms of nature.

In the summer of 1381, ravaged by poverty and oppressed by taxes, the people of England rose up and demanded that their voices be heard. A ragtag army, led by the mysteri­ous Wat Tyler and the visionary preacher John Ball, rose up against the 14-year-old Richard II and his most powerful lords and knights, who risked their property and their lives in a desperate battle to save the English crown. Dan Jones brings this incendiary moment to life.

The Roman historian Tacitus was a successful politician who eventually became governor of the province of Asia. He is thought to have died around AD 120 and benefitted from the patronage of the Flavian emperors. The Histories, of which only just over four out of 14 books survive, covers the years following the assassination of the Emperor Nero: Rome was plunged into further civil war with the Year of the Four Emperors (AD 69), which culminated in the accession of Vespasian, the first of the Flavians.

In The Race for Paradise, Paul M. Cobb offers a new history of the confrontations between Muslims and Franks we now call the "Crusades", one that emphasizes the diversity of Muslim experiences of the European holy war. There is more to the story than Jerusalem, the Templars, Saladin, and the Assassins. Cobb considers the Arab perspective on all shores of the Muslim Mediterranean, from Spain to Syria.

Medieval knights were like armoured tanks in combat. They often made quick work of their enemies. They may not have realized it, but they owed their success to science. Learn how science helped medieval knights win victory!

In The Accursed Tower, Roger Crowley delivers a lively narrative of the lead-up to the siege and a vivid, blow-by-blow account of the climactic battle. Drawing on extant Arabic sources as well as untranslated Latin documents, he argues that Acre is notable for technical advances in military planning and siege warfare, and extraordinary for its individual heroism and savage slaughter. A gripping depiction of the crusader era told through its dramatic last moments, The Accursed Tower offers an essential new view on a crucial turning point in world history.

The Magna Carta is revered around the world as the founding document of Western liberty. Its principles - even its language - can be found in our Bill of Rights and in the Constitution. But what was this strange document and how did it gain such legendary status? Dan Jones takes us back to the turbulent year of 1215, when, beset by foreign crises and cornered by a growing domestic rebellion, King John reluctantly agreed to fix his seal to a document that would change the course of history.

After the long period of cultural decline known as the Dark Ages, Europe experienced a rebirth of scholarship, art, literature, philosophy, and science, and began to develop a vision of Western society that remains at the heart of Western civilization today.

In a saga reminiscent of Game of Thrones and The Last Kingdom, Battle for the Island Kingdom reveals the life-and-death struggle for power which changed the course of history. The six decades leading up to 1066 were defined by bloody wars and intrigues, in which three peoples vied for supremacy over the island kingdom. In this epic retelling, Don Hollway (The Last Viking) recounts the clashes of Vikings, Anglo-Saxons and Normans, their warlords and their conniving queens.

The legends of vampires like Dracula have generated massive interest throughout time. Indeed, the story of a man (in some versions a very handsome, dashing man), who feeds on the blood of virgins in order to survive, and who walks the earth only at night, has been revived throughout the centuries in different forms. However, one famous tale that has been lost among the legends is the story of a female Dracula, an educated woman from a well-known family of 16th century Hungary....

Europe is an astonishingly successful place. In this dazzling new history, best-selling author Simon Jenkins grippingly tells the story of its evolution from warring peoples to peace, wealth and freedom - a story that twists and turns from Greece and Rome, through the Dark Ages, the Reformation and the French Revolution, to the Second World War and up to the present day. Jenkins takes in leaders from Julius Caesar and Joan of Arc to Wellington and Angela Merkel as well as cultural figures from Aristotle to Shakespeare and Picasso.

Scandinavia has always been a world apart. For millennia Norwegians, Danes, Finns, and Swedes lived a remote and rugged existence among the fjords and peaks of the land of the midnight sun. But when they finally left their homeland in search of opportunity, these wanderers — including the most famous, the Vikings — would reshape Europe and beyond.

Hungary is more than just vampire stories and cheesy violin-playing waiters named “Laszlo”. It has a rich history that goes back to the first wild Magyar horsemen, who arrived there in the late ninth century. For a time, the Magyars were both mercenaries and raiders, a horse-bound version of the Vikings in France and Britain. They terrorized the populations of Austria, Germany, and even Italy and eastern France. After the Austro-Hungarian defeat in WWI, Hungary became an independent nation.

In the second half of the tenth century, Byzantium embarked on a series of spectacular conquests. By the early eleventh century, the empire was the most powerful state in the Mediterranean. Yet this imperial project came to a crashing collapse fifty years later, when political disunity, fiscal mismanagement, and defeat at the hands of the Seljuks and the Normans brought an end to Byzantine hegemony. By 1081, Byzantium's very existence was threatened.

Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts is a remarkable examination of 12 illuminated manuscripts from the medieval period. Noted authority Christopher de Hamel invites the listener into intimate conversations with these texts to explore what they tell us about nearly a thousand years of medieval history - and sometimes about the modern world too. In so doing, de Hamel introduces us to kings, queens, saints, scribes, artists, librarians, thieves, dealers, and collectors.