English Medieval History

Thomas B. Costain's four-volume history of the Plantagenets begins with The Conquering Family and the conquest of England by William the Conqueror in 1066, closing with the reign of John in 1216. The troubled period after the Norman Conquest, when the foundations of government were hammered out between monarch and people, comes to life through Costain's storytelling skill and historical imagination.

Livingston argues that the English lens through which the war has been viewed has led historians to define it in terms of English interests (most famously, the claim of the English Plantagenet king Edward III to be the rightful king of France), and that the events collectively labelled the ‘Hundred Years War’ are best seen as a sequence of steps in France’s struggle to define itself as a nation. For much of the period, France’s primary rival was indeed England. But it was by no means the only combatant. Burgundy stood in its way, too, as did Brittany, Flanders, Navarre and other rival powers.

For nearly a thousand years following its foundation, there was only one Christian church. Centered in the city of Rome, the church expanded and grew until it became the dominant religion in Europe and beyond. The early growth of the Church had been suppressed by the Romans until the Emperor Constantine became the first to convert the empire to Christianity. From that point forward, the growth of the Church was inextricably linked with the Roman Empire - the most powerful military, economic, and political force in the ancient world.

Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her.

How have the crusades contributed to Islamist rage and terrorism today? Were the crusades the Christian equivalent of modern jihad? In this sweeping yet crisp history, Thomas F. Madden offers a brilliant and compelling narrative of the crusades and their contemporary relevance.

Starting AD 400 (around the time of their invasion of England) and running through to the 1100s (the 'Aftermath'), historian Geoffrey Hindley shows the Anglo-Saxons as formative in the history not only of England but also of Europe. The society inspired by the warrior world of the Old English poem Beowulf saw England become the world's first nation state and Europe's first country to conduct affairs in its own language, and Bede and Boniface of Wessex establish the dating convention we still use today.

For 700 years, Japan was ruled by military commanders who waged war against one another incessantly. Shogun tells the fascinating story of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the man who finally unified and brought lasting peace to the nation. He established a new central government which enabled his descendants to rule Japan for the next 260 years—a period in which Japanese culture as we know it today flourished.

Mongol leader Genghis Khan was by far the greatest conqueror the world has ever known. His empire stretched from the Pacific Ocean to Central Europe, including all of China, the Middle East, and Russia. So how did an illiterate nomad rise to such colossal power and subdue most of the known world, eclipsing Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon?

For as long as language and communication have existed, humans have invented ways to mask their messages from prying eyes. One could be forgiven for assuming there are no ciphers left unsolved. On the contrary, a diverse array of both ancient and modern cryptographic challenges, which have stumped even the most seasoned code crackers of today, exist, and may exist for generations to come. Among the most famous of these memorandums is a 600-year-old document that continues to mystify: the Voynich Manuscript.

When most people think about the Middle Ages, they think about Europe. Images of knights, jousting, and even Christianity, seem ingrained in our understanding of the medieval era. However, the Middle Ages stretched far beyond Europe, which was struggling to rebuild after the fall of the Roman Empire. Europe may have fumbled along for about a thousand years, but Africa became a powerhouse of trade and wealth.

The illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages are among the greatest works of European art and literature. We are dazzled by them and recognize their crucial role in the transmission of knowledge. However, we generally think much less about the countless men and women who made, collected and preserved them through the centuries, and to whom they owe their existence. This entrancing book describes some of the extraordinary people who have spent their lives among illuminated manuscripts over the last thousand years.

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.

The Carolingian Dynasty, which carved out a major empire in Europe from 750-887, ushered in an important period in the Early Middle Ages. The Carolingians were in their time seen as the successors of Ancient Rome in the West, and while they sought to reestablish the glory of antiquity, they’re remembered today for effectively founding the states that would become France and Germany.

The Knights Templar has established itself as the most popular military organization of medieval times. Everyone has heard of the order, and everyone is familiar with the image of a medieval Crusader knight with a red cross on their white uniform. But who exactly were the Templars? What was their purpose? And are the rumors about their secretive nature true?

In all of Roman history there was never a more turbulent year than A.D. 69, the ill-omened "Year of the Three Emperors". By some miracle, the greatest historian of the age, Tacitus, was able to chronicle those momentous events in a work he called The History. In its pages are some of the most memorable events of Roman history described in some of the most intensely passionate prose ever devised.

Brienna desires only two things: to master her passion and to be chosen by a patron. Growing up in Valenia at the renowned Magnalia House should have prepared her. While some are born with a talent for one of the five passions - art, music, dramatics, wit, and knowledge - Brienna struggled to find hers until she chose knowledge. However, Brienna's greatest fear comes true - she is left without a patron. But months later, her life takes an unexpected turn when a disgraced lord offers her patronage.

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.

Step into the armour-clad world of one of history’s most iconic and misunderstood brotherhoods—the Knights Templar. In this compelling and richly detailed exploration, Korey Blathewick unpacks the rise, structure, and ultimate fall of an order that straddled the divine and the deadly. From humble origins guarding pilgrims on the treacherous roads to Jerusalem, the Templars swiftly rose to become elite warriors, international bankers, and spiritual exemplars—answerable only to the Pope and feared by kings.

Brienna is a mistress of knowledge and is beginning to settle into her role as the daughter of the once-disgraced Lord Davin MacQuinn. Though she’d just survived a revolution that will return a queen to the throne, she faces yet another challenge: acceptance by the MacQuinns. But as Queen Isolde Kavanagh’s closest confidant, she’ll have to balance serving her father’s house as well as her country.

When the legendary Frankish king and emperor Charlemagne died in 814 he left behind a dominion and a legacy unlike anything seen in Western Europe since the fall of Rome. Johannes Fried paints a compelling portrait of a devout ruler, a violent time, and a unified kingdom that deepens our understanding of the man often called the father of Europe.