Henrietta Leyser considers the problems and attitudes fundamental to every woman of the time: medieval views on sex, marriage and motherhood; the world of work and the experience of widowhood for peasant, townswoman and aristocrat. The intellectual and spiritual worlds of medieval women are also explored.MEDIEVAL WOMEN celebrates the diversity and vitality of English women's lives in the Middle Ages.

'Here lies our leader all cut down, the valiant man in the dust.' The elegiac words of the Battle of Maldon, an epic poem written to celebrate the bravery of an English army defeated by Viking raiders in 991, emerge from a diverse literature – including Beowulf and Bede's Ecclesiastical History – produced by the peoples known as the Anglo-Saxons: Germanic tribes who migrated to Britain from Lower Saxony and Denmark in the early fifth century CE. The era once known as the 'Dark Ages' was ma...

Written by the Oxford historian Henrietta Leyser, BEDA is a gazetteer to the remaining Anglo-Saxon ruins in England, many of them from the time of the Venerable Bede. For those who have bought Simon Jenkins' 100 Best Churches and now want something different, this is an invaluable window onto the world of the author of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People.Concentrating on Bede himself (our most valuable historical source on Anglo Saxon England, and author of books that ...

Samuel Fanous and Henrietta Leyser present a vivid interdisciplinary study devoted to the life, work and extant vita of Christina of Markyate, which draws on research from a wide range of disciplines.This fascinating and comprehensive collection surveys the life of an extraordinary medieval woman. Christina of Markyate made a vow of chastity at an early age, against the wishes of her parents who intended her to marry. When forced into wedlock, she fled in disguise and went...

In the fifty years between 1530 and 1580, England moved from being one of the most lavishly Catholic countries in Europe to being a Protestant nation, a land of whitewashed churches and antipapal preaching. What was the impact of this religious change in the countryside? And how did country people feel about the revolutionary upheavals that transformed their mental and material worlds under Henry VIII and his three children?In this book a reformation historian takes us inside the...

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 Cas...

‘Combines scholarly zest with novelistic flair. Jones serves his account hot, brave and reeking with gore’ THE TIMESRevolt and upheaval in medieval Britain by a brilliant new narrative historian, ‘Summer of Blood’ breaks new ground in its portrayal of the personalities and politics of the bloody days of June 1381.The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 is one of the most dramatic and bloody events in English history. Starting with village riots in the Essex countrysid...

The reign of Elizabeth I - a Golden Age? Try asking her subjects...Elizabethans did all they could to survive in an age of sin and bling, of beddings and beheadings, galleons and guns. Explorers set sail for new worlds, risking everything to bring back slaves, gold and the priceless potato. Elizabeth lined her coffers while her subjects lived in squalor with hunger, violence and misery as bedfellows. Shakespeare shone and yet the beggars, doxies and thieves scraped and cheated to s...

It took Henry VIII twenty-eight years, three wives, and a break with Rome before he secured a legitimate male heir. Yet he already had a son – the illegitimate Henry Fitzroy. Fitzroy was born in 1519 after the King's affair with Elizabeth Blount. He was the only illegitimate offspring ever acknowledged by Henry VIII, and Cardinal Wolsey was even one of his godparents. So just how close did he come to being Henry IX?

Leading archaeologist Francis Pryor retells the story of King Arthur, legendary king of the Britons, tracing it back to its Bronze Age origins.The legend of King Arthur and Camelot is one of the most enduring in Britain's history, spanning centuries and surviving invasions by Angles, Vikings and Normans. In his latest book Francis Pryor – one of Britain’s most celebrated archaeologists and author of the acclaimed ‘Britain B.C.’ and ‘Seahenge’ – traces the story of Arthur back to it...

From the best-selling author of The Seven Daughters of Eve, an illuminating guide to the genetic history of the British Isles.One of the world's leading geneticists, Bryan Sykes has helped thousands find their ancestry in the British Isles. Saxons, Vikings, and Celts, which resulted from a systematic ten-year DNA survey of more than 10,000 volunteers, traces the true genetic makeup of the British Isles and its descendants, taking readers from the Pontnewydd cave i...

Everyone loves a good disaster story. Fire, famine, disease, war...the world as we know it might end in a million different ways. The Plague, Pestilence, and Apocalypse MEGAPACK™ explores some of the holocausts that might befall mankind, with a special emphasis on plagues (a personal favorite theme of the publisher). If this volume proves popular, we'll do additional volumes focusing on other apocalyptic events... Ice ages? Atomic war? The death of the sun? The possibilities are endless.