English Medieval History

The history of England can be said to have begun with the arrival of Julius Caesar in 54 BC. Four hundred years later, Romano British civilization came to an end with the withdrawal of Roman military protection and the onslaught by successive waves of Germanic invasions. Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, and Norsemen ravaged Britain for almost 500 years. The native Celtic peoples were displaced and driven westward into present-day Wales, where their descendants dwell to this day.

The history of magic is as long as time and as wide as the world. In every culture, in every age, in every place and, probably, in every heart, there is magic. Harry Potter: A History of Magic reveals some of the hidden stories behind real-world magic and explores some of J.K. Rowling's magical inventions alongside their folkloric, cultural and historical forebears.

Cyril Robinson's magnificent history continues with volume two in this four-part series. We now follow the fortunes of two great royal dynasties: Tudor and Stuart. Great names from England's past tumble out one after the other. Henry VIII takes the English out of the Catholic fold. His daughter, Elizabeth, defeats the Spanish Armada of 1588. The arrogance of Charles I leads him to the scaffold. Civil War and Puritanism follow, led by the intrepid Oliver Cromwell.

In the first volume of this epic new series, Alison Weir strips away centuries of romantic mythology and prejudice to reveal the lives of England's queens in the century after the Norman Conquest. Beginning with Matilda of Flanders, who supported William the Conqueror in 1066, to the turbulent life of the Empress Maud, who claimed to be queen of England in her own right and fought a bitter war to that end, the five Norman queens emerge as hugely influential figures and fascinating characters.

For over two millennia in the West, familiarity with the literature, philosophy, and values of the Classical World has been synonymous with education itself. The traditions of the Greeks explain why Western Culture’s unique tenets of democracy, capitalism, civil liberty, and constitutional government are now sweeping the globe. Yet the general public in America knows less about its cultural origins than ever before, as Classical education rapidly disappears from our high school and university curricula.

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.

Young Duncan M'Kethe finds himself caught in the web of Sir James Turner, the former Covenanter turned military leader of the persecutors. Duncan is torn by his hatred of Turner's dragoons, who have treated his friends cruelly, and his father's instructions to love them. He must be true to Jesus Christ while attempting to rescue his father from enemy hands.

March 1294. Ireland is at a crossroads. The different factions—Irish, Danish, and English—are tearing the country apart with their constant warfare. Hoping to hammer out a treaty, David calls the Irish Parliament into session. Unfortunately, some lords are far more interested in fighting than talking, and it isn’t long before the conference goes awry.

Anna had never been particularly interested in her mother's past. She certainly hadn't ever given much in the way of credence to her stories about the last Prince of Wales. But when Anna crashes through time into a snowy afternoon in medieval Wales, she suddenly finds herself embarking on a journey that transforms not only her own life, but an entire world ...

April 1294. With David returned from Ireland and Anna from Avalon, the time has come to confront the traitors who sought to assassinate David and take his throne. But before that can happen, David is tested yet again by his inability to account for everything or everyone in his life - and especially the magic that surrounds him.

Have you ever wondered what life would be like if you were born into another time period? What about the Middle Ages? Would you have been lucky and lived as a knight, a lord or lady, or even a king or queen? Or would you have been like the majority of peasants and lived a tough life of hard labor? Did everyone live in castles? What did people do for work? And for fun? Did knights really fight dragons? You’ll find out the answers to these questions and so much more in this incredible audiobook on medieval Europe.

Both a history and an examination of human thought and behavior spanning three thousand years, On Politics thrillingly traces the origins of political philosophy from the ancient Greeks to Machiavelli in Book I and from Hobbes to the present age in Book II. Whether examining Lord Acton's dictum that "absolute power corrupts absolutely" or explicating John Stuart Mill's contention that it is "better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied," Alan Ryan evokes the lives and minds of our greatest thinkers in a way that makes hearing about them a transcendent experience.

For many, the medieval world seems dark and foreign - a miraculous, brutal, and irrational time of superstition and strange relics. The pursuit of heretics, the Inquisition, the Crusades, and the domination of the "Holy Land" come to mind.

The Holy Roman Empire lasted 1,000 years, far longer than ancient Rome. Yet this formidable dominion never inspired the awe of its predecessor. Voltaire quipped that it was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire. Yet as Peter H. Wilson shows, the Holy Roman Empire tells a millennial story of Europe better than the histories of individual nation-states.

Two teenagers are catapulted back in time to alter history and save the medieval kingdom of Wales ... David and his man-at-arms, Ieuan, find themselves alone and on the run from a company of English soldiers who've sworn vengeance for the recent death of their king. Meanwhile, Llywelyn lays on his deathbed, wounded by a traitor's arrow. And once again, it is David and Anna, and all that they represent, that holds the key to the survival of Wales.

Byzantium. The name evokes grandeur and exoticism—gold, cunning, and complexity. In this unique book, Judith Herrin unveils the riches of a quite different civilization. Avoiding a standard chronological account of the Byzantine Empire's millennium-long history, she identifies the fundamental questions about Byzantium—what it was, and what special significance it holds for us today.

Christmas Eve might not seem like the best moment to time travel back to the modern world in a giant bus. When you're the King of England, however, it's the one night of the year when nobody else is watching. And when things don’t go as planned, either in the modern world or the medieval one, it’s up to David and his collection of time travelers to alter history and save the Kingdom of Wales … again.

When Columbus triumphantly returned from America to Spain in 1493, his discoveries inflamed an already smoldering conflict between Spain's renowned monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, and Portugal's João II. Which nation was to control the world's oceans? To quell the argument, Pope Alexander VI issued a proclamation laying the foundation for the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494, an edict that created an imaginary line in the Atlantic Ocean dividing the entire known (and unknown) world between Spain and Portugal.

At the end of the fifteenth century, Burgundy was extinguished as an independent state. It had been a fabulously wealthy, turbulent region situated between France and Germany, with close links to the English kingdom. Torn apart by the dynastic struggles of early modern Europe, this extraordinary realm vanished from the map. But it became the cradle of what we now know as the Low Countries, modern Belgium and the Netherlands. This is the story of a thousand years, a must-listen narrative history of ambitious aristocrats, family dysfunction, treachery, savage battles, luxury, and madness.

As a child, he was given his own suit of armor; at the age of 16, he helped defeat the French at Crecy. At Poitiers, in 1356, his victory over King John II of France forced the French into a humiliating surrender that marked the zenith of England's dominance in the Hundred Years War. As lord of Aquitaine, he ruled a vast swathe of territory across the west and southwest of France, holding a magnificent court at Bordeaux that mesmerized the brave but unruly Gascon nobility. He was Edward of Woodstock, eldest son of Edward III, and better known to posterity as "the Black Prince".