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‘Hollman combines scrupulous research with spellbinding storytelling; The Queen and the Mistress will keep you turning the pages.’ - Sylvia Barbara Soberton, author of Ladies-In-Waiting: The Women Who Served Anne Boleyn‘A must-read for anyone interested in medieval women’s or royal history.’ - Catherine Hanley, author of Matilda: Empress, Queen, Warrior‘In The Queen and the Mistress, Gemma Hollman challenges much of the misinformation and misconceptions which have surrounded both women for centu...

Using wide-ranging evidence, Martyn Whittock shines a light on Britain in the Middle Ages, bringing it vividly to life in this fascinating new portrait that brings together the everyday and the extraordinary.Thus we glimpse 11th-century rural society through a conversation between a ploughman and his master.The life of Dick Whittington illuminates the rise of the urban elite. The stories of Roger 'the Raker' who drowned in his own sewage, a 'merman' imprisoned in Orford Castle and the sufferings...

This study examines the darker side of England's culture of economic improvement between 1640 and 1720. It is often suggested that England in this period grew strikingly confident of its prospect for unlimited growth. Indeed, merchants, inventors, and others promised to achieve immense profit and abundance. Such flowery promises were then, as now, prone to perversion, however. This volume is concerned with the taming of incipient capitalism - how a society in the past responded when promises of...

Contains: The Wandering Jew, Prestor John, The Divining Rod, The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, William Tell, The Dog Gellert, Tailed Men, Antichrist and Pope Joan, The Man in the Moon, The Mountain of Venus, Fatality of Numbers, S. Patrick's Purgatory, The Terrestrial Paradise, S. George, S. Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins, The Legend of the Cross, Schamir, The Piper of Hameln, Bishop Hatto, Melusina, The Fortunate Isles, Swan Maidens, The Knight of the Swan, The Sangreal, Theophilus

Written by the renowned expert Nigel West, this book exposes the operations of Britain's overseas intelligence-gathering organisation, the famed Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, and traces its origins back to its inception in 1909. In this meticulously researched account, its activities and structure are described in detail, using original secret service documents. The main body of the book concerns MI6's operations during the Second World War, and includes some remarkable successes and failur...

The Middle Ages covers a span of roughly one thousand years, and through that time people were subject to an array of not only deadly diseases but deplorable living conditions. It was a time when cures for sickness were often worse than the illness itself mixed with a population of people who lacked any real understanding of sanitation and cleanliness. Dive in to the history of medieval medicine, and learn how the foundations of healing were built on the knowledge of ancient Greek and Roman phi...

A life of Matilda-empress, skilled military leader, and one of the greatest figures of the English Middle Ages "[Matilda] will attract a growing audience interested in stories of women challenging the male-dominated European past."-Alexandra Locking, Medieval Review "A lively and authoritative account."-Katherine Harvey, Times Literary Supplement Matilda was a daughter, wife, and mother. But she was also empress, heir to the English crown-the first woman ever to hold the position-and an able...

St Swithun was an obscure ninth-century bishop of Winchester about whom little was, and is, known. But following the translation of his relics from a conspicuous tomb into the Old Minster, Winchester, on 15 July 971, the massive rebuilding of the cathedral, and a vigorous publicity campaign by Bishop Aethelwold (963-84), St Swithun became one of the most popular and important English saints, whose cult was widespread not only in England but also in Ireland, Scandinavia, and France. The present v...

A Chronology of Medieval British History 1307–1485 is a year-by-year guide to political, military, religious and cultural developments in the states within the British Isles from 1307-1485. The book uses a range of primary sources to provide a detailed and comprehensive narrative of events as they occurred. Throughout, the dating and accuracy of the records are identified, and problems of interpretation highlighted. The result is both a narrative of developments in parallel and inter-connected...

Spanning the years 500 to 1000 A.D., this volume illustrates the conflict between brutality and civilization that seemed to characterize the period so often called-not improperly-the "Dark Ages." Islam and Byzantium, as much as Western Europe, figure in the twenty-two chapters of documents offered in this book, part of the ten-volume series, "Sources of Western Civilization."

Property and Piety comprises an edition and translation, with extensive commentary, of thirty-three Anglo-Saxon and Norman documents relating to the topography and minsters of early medieval Winchester. These texts record the physical effects on the city of the foundation and expansion of the three neighbouring minsters, and also of the removal of the New Minster to Hyde in about 1110. They record political, religious, and cultural aspects of the tenth-century reform of Benedictine monasticism,...

A spectacular visual guide to the epic 4,000-year history of weaponry, created in association with the Smithsonian Institution. Weapon: A Visual History of Arms and Armor tells this epic story of the entire spectrum of weaponry through stunning photography and authoritative coverage, from the stone axes of the earliest warfare to the heavy artillery of today's armies. Take a journey through the centuries, from the Viking sword to the Baker rifle to the AK-47, as you explore the forms and functi...

Melvyn Bragg explores the pivotal role of England's north in defining modern Britain, and its enduring effect on every part of the globe'It's impossible not to admire the thrust and sweep of this series' The TelegraphIn this captivating 10-part series, Melvyn Bragg brings all his enthusiasm, experience and expertise to a subject that has enthralled him his entire life: the importance of the North in shaping the United Kingdom. Joined by special guests including Dame Judi Dench,...

In this action-packed new Bernicia Chronicles adventure from Matthew Harffy, Beobrand finds himself in a dangerous foreign land, caught between warring factions of royalty and the Church. AD 652. Beobrand has been ordered to lead a group of pilgrims to the holy city of Rome. Chief among them is Wilfrid, a novice of the church with some surprisingly important connections. Taking only Cynan and some of his best men, Beobrand hopes to make the journey through Frankia quickly and return to Northumbr...

If you peruse a bookshop's shelves, Tudor history seems to concern itself with Monarchy (mostly wives), religion (for or against the Reformation) with a side order of cookery (pies and pottage). Tudor warfare has either been dismissed as unimportant or criticised for its 'backwardness'. There have, however, been recent attempts to re-evaluate the achievements of the Tudors at war, especially the part played by Henry VIII in the 'modernisation' of the army, in the context of the continuing milit...

Old English Lives of Saints, a series composed in the 990s by the Benedictine monk Aelfric in his distinctive alliterative prose, portrays an array of saints-including virgin martyrs, married virgins, aristocrats, kings, soldiers, and bishops-for a late Anglo-Saxon audience. At a turbulent time when England was under increasingly severe Viking attack, the examples of these saints modeled courageous faith, self-sacrifice, and individual and collective resistance. The Lives also covers topics as d...

The reissue of Joseph and Frances Gies's classic bestseller on life in medieval villages. This new reissue of Life in a Medieval Village, by respected historians Joseph and Frances Gies, paints a lively, convincing portrait of rural people at work and at play in the Middle Ages. Focusing on the village of Elton, in the English East Midlands, the Gieses detail the agricultural advances that made communal living possible, explain what domestic life was like for serf and lord alike, and describe t...