Middle Ages

In 1465, the Nevills must have thought they’d reached the pinnacle of power and influence in England. Richard Nevill was the king’s right-hand man and married to the richest woman in the kingdom; Joh …

The bloody Albigensian Crusade launched against the Cathar heretics of southern France in the early thirteenth century is infamous for its brutality and savagery, even by the standards of the Middle …

In 711 the Islamic Moors of Arab and Berber descent in North Africa crossed the Strait of Gibraltar onto the Iberian Peninsula, and in a series of raids they conquered Visigothic Christian Hispania a …

Medieval Christmas – roaring fires, Yule logs, boar’s head on a platter and carols. So many of our best-loved traditions have their origins in the medieval period that it would be impossible to imagi …

This book chronicles the overwhelming importance of the military archer in the late medieval period. The longbow played a central role in the English victory at the battles of Crecy and Agincourt. Co …

Isabella de Valois was 3 years old when, on a hot August day in 1392, her father suddenly went mad. Less than four years later, she was married by proxy to the English King Richard II and arrived in …

In the Medieval Period the English Channel was a particularly perilous stretch of water. It had two distinct (and often conflicting) functions: as a rich commercial seaway, on which the rising econom …

Of all the Celtic peoples once dominant across the whole of Europe north of the Alps, only the Scots established a kingdom that lasted. Wales, Brittany and Ireland, subject to the same sort of pressu …

This title provides a vivid account of the way the Crusade and its legacy turned and twisted for over a hundred years. It focuses on the personalities on sides, their motivations and objectives, crea …

The Wars of the Roses were not just fought by men on the battlefield. Behind the scenes, there were daughters, wives, mistresses, mothers and queens whose lives and influences helped shape the most d …