Medieval Life

A history of peasants in the Middle Ages, the story takes the listener into the life of Marion, the carpenter's wife, and her extended family as they struggle to survive through hardship, featuring a year in their lives at the mercy of the weather and the Lord of the Manor. Existing without soap, paper or glass and only with the most basic of tools, we learn how they survive starvation, sickness, fire and natural disaster in their home on the edge of the Weald.

Written in alternating prose and poetry, La Vita Nuova is a profound reflection on the nature of love, devoted to Dante's muse Beatrice. Following Beatrice's death in 1290, Dante became obsessed with the young Florentine woman, whom he only ever knew from a distance. He believed his love for her was a form of divine love and saw her as an image of salvation itself - a theme that is later explored in his masterpiece The Divine Comedy, where she guides him through heaven.

"It takes an entire lifetime to learn how to die", wrote the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca (c. 4 BC-65 AD). He counseled readers to "study death always", and took his own advice, returning to the subject again and again in all his writings, yet he never treated it in a complete work. How to Die gathers in one volume, for the first time, Seneca's remarkable meditations on death and dying. Edited and translated by James S. Romm, How to Die reveals a provocative thinker who speaks with a startling frankness about the need to accept death or even, under certain conditions, to seek it out.

Plutarchs's (46-120 A.D.) epic chronicle of the lives of great Grecians and Romans. Beginning with the founding of Rome and Athens, the lives of the men who created the ancient world are brought to life in this new, high quality recording. Greats such as Romulus, Pericles, Theseus, Lycurgus and many others come alive as their politics, economy, and their individual stories play out in the time of the Ancients. This translation by John Dryden, which is considered by scholars to be the quintessential translation.

Medieval manuscripts can tell us much about power and art, knowledge and beauty. Many have survived because of an author’s status - part of the reason we have so much of Chaucer’s writing, for example, is because he was a London-based government official first and a poet second.

John Gaunt was the son of Edward III, brother to the Black Prince, father to Henry IV, and the sire of all those Tudors. He has had pretty bad press: supposed usurper of Richard II’s crown and the focus of hatred in the Peasants’ Revolt, as they torched his home, the Savoy Palace. Helen Carr paints a complex portrait of a man who held the levers of power on the English and European stage, passionately upheld chivalric values, pressed for the Bible to be translated into English, and patronized the arts.

Lucas and Clara search for Queen Tasha's missing emerald. On their exciting adventure, they travel to all the main attractions of Wrenly: Primlox (the island of fairies), Burth (the island of trolls), Crestwood (the island of dragons), Hobsgrove (the island of wizards), and the beautiful Mermaid's Cove. King Caleb has promised to reward the person who finds the precious stone, and Lucas and Clara are determined to search the entire kingdom until they find it!

Born a slave, the Roman Stoic philosopher Epictetus (c. 55-135 AD) taught that mental freedom is supreme, since it can liberate one anywhere, even in a prison. In How to Be Free, A. A. Long - one of the world's leading authorities on Stoicism and a pioneer in its remarkable contemporary revival - provides a superb new edition of Epictetus's celebrated guide to the Stoic philosophy of life (the Encheiridion) along with a selection of related reflections in his Discourses.

K.M. Grant pens an exciting tale of historical fiction set in the 12th century. Will is permitted to chose his own warhorse now that he has turned 13. Much to everyone's amusement, he selects a rather small chestnut. But Will sees something magical in this horse. As they accompany King Richard on a crusade to the Holy Land, the noble stallion galvanizes young Will with his displays of strength, courage, and loyalty.

Worried that old age will inevitably mean losing your libido, your health, and possibly your marbles too? Well, Cicero has some good news for you. In How to Grow Old, the great Roman orator and statesman eloquently describes how you can make the second half of life the best part of all - and why you might discover that reading and gardening are actually far more pleasurable than sex ever was.

Come with us to an Enchanted Place, a forest where Winnie-the-Pooh lived with Piglet, Rabbit, Owl, Eeyore, Kanga, and Little Roo. The stories are about Christopher Robin and these good companions having wonderful times getting in and out of trouble. It is all very exciting and, really, quite thrilling no matter how young or old you may be. It is painful to try and imagine what the world would be like without them.

Winter, 1362. After decades of successful campaigning in France, Thomas Blackstone, once a common archer, has risen to become Edward III's Master of War. But the title is as much a curse as a blessing. Success has brought few rewards: his family—bar his son Henry—is dead, slaughtered; his enemies only multiply. Death, in so many guises, beckons. As he battles to enforce his King's claim to French territory, Blackstone will assault an impregnable fortress, he'll become embroiled in a feud between French aristocrats, he'll be forced into pitched battle in the dead of winter.

We know that they prayed, sang, and wore long robes, but what was it really like to be a monk? Though monastic living may seem unimaginable to us moderns, it has relevance for today. This book illuminates the day-to-day of medieval European monasticism, showing how you can apply the principles of monastic living, like finding balance and peace, to your life. With wit and insight, medievalist and podcaster Daniele Cybulskie dives into the history of monasticism in each chapter and then reveals applications for today.

The first monument of real Christianity among the Saxons was the Heliand, an epic on the life of Christ in Old Saxon alliterative verse, dating from about 830. The original work attempted to make the newly imposed Christian religion intelligible to the warlike Saxons. The Heliand, extant in four manuscripts, and the fragmentary Old Saxon Genesis, are all that remain of Old Saxon poetry. This poetic harmony of the Gospels employs modern English alliterative verse couplets, in a complex structure of 75 cantos, to generate a vigorous retelling of the story of the Christ in a swaggering, epic ...

Everyone believes Lady Evangeline is dead…her survival depends on it. If not for Lady Evangeline’s secret training in weaponry, her corpse would be rotting in a ditch. Instead, she finds refuge in a crumbling abbey—and new purpose. With her child dead and her husband lost to the lies of a devious plotter, Evangeline vows to fight for the starving widows and children in the villages surrounding the abbey. Masquerading as a nun by day, and an armed vigilante by night, she will free these people no matter what it takes. Lord Henry Stanton still grieves the death of Evangeline. How can he...

Sent into a convent at the age of six, Mary daughter of Edward I, decides to make the best of a bad situation. It soon becomes obvious she is never going to make a good nun! Never forgetting that she is a princess by birth, the feisty gambler travels around England, living the high life at daddy's expense, and acquiring numerous other bad "habits" ... including being linked romantically to the Earl of Surrey, John de Warenne. When her Father the King becomes ill and dies, the crown goes to Mary's brother Edward II and the travelling nun attends his disastrous Coronation, rubbing shoulders ...

The millennium between the breakup of the western Roman Empire and the Reformation was a long and hugely transformative period - one not easily chronicled within a single book. Yet distinguished historian Chris Wickham has taken up the challenge in this landmark book, and he succeeds in producing the most riveting account of medieval Europe in a generation.

Falstaff is both a comic and tragic central protagonist in Shakespeare's three Henry plays. He is companion to Prince Hal (the future Henry V), who loves him, goads him, teases him, indulges his vast appetites, and commits all sorts of mischief with him. Award-winning author and esteemed professor Harold Bloom examines Falstaff with the deepest compassion and sympathy and also with unerring wisdom. He uses the relationship between Falstaff and Hal to explore the devastation of severed bonds and the heartbreak of betrayal.

In this classic of social history, the author describes the lives of six obscure men and women of the Middle Ages. She draws on account books, records, letters, diaries, and wills to make the life of those times as concrete and comprehensible as our own.

Embark on an enthralling journey through the heart of Medieval England in this captivating exploration of one of history's most dynamic periods. Delve into the lives of kings and queens, knights and peasants, as the story of England unfolds against the backdrop of feudalism, chivalry, and religious upheaval. Experience the turbulence of the Magna Carta, the devastation of the Black Death, and the intrigue of the Wars of the Roses, all of which shaped the destiny of England.