1066 is the most famous date in English history. On 14 October, on Senlac Hill near Hastings, a battle was fought that would change the face of England forever. Over the next twenty years, Norman culture was imposed on England, and English politics and society were radically reshaped. But how much is really known about William 'the Conqueror', the Norman duke who led his men to victory on that autumn Saturday in what was to be the last successful invasion of England? Mark Hagger here takes...

Southern England. Late summer 1940. The nation is fighting for its very survival and the Luftwaffe's aerial offensive is unrelenting. All that lies between invasion and salvation for Britain is the 'thin blue line' of RAF Fighter Command and its pilots.This newly illustrated anniversary edition of Life as a Battle of Britain Pilot reveals what it was like to fly a fighter plane in the Battle of Britain. Who were the Spitfire and Hurricane pilots of 1940? H...

Eight generations of the greatest and worst kings and queens that this country has ever seen – from the White Ship to the Lionheart, bad King John to the Black Prince and John of Gaunt – this is the dynasty that invented England as we still know it today – great history to appeal to readers of Ken Follet, Bernard Cornwell, Tom HollandEngland’s greatest royal dynasty, the Plantagenets, ruled over England through eight generations of kings. Their remarkable reign saw England emerge f...

Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine was one of the leading personalities of the Middle Ages and also one of the most controversial. She was beautiful, intelligent and wilful, and in her lifetime there were rumours about her that were not without substance. She had been reared in a relaxed and licentious court where the arts of the troubadours flourished, and was even said to have presided over the fabled Courts of Love. Eleanor married in turn Louis VII of France and Henry II of England, and was...

Which king's guards massacred a group of his supporters by mistake? Who had an oversized tongue and had to slobber when they ate food? Who was so large when they died that they had to be buried in a square coffin? Who survived seven assassination attempts? As you can tell from the bizarre questions above, it wasn't all thrones and sceptres for British kings and queens. Some of them were completely batty, and others were downright vicious. On the other hand, some monarchs were an icon to th...

An exploration of the British monarchy from the retreat of the Romans up until the modern day. This compendium volume of two earlier books is fully revised and updated.The monarchy is one of Britain’s longest surviving institutions – as well as one of its most tumultuous and revered. In this masterful book, David Starkey looks at the monarchy as a whole, charting its history from Roman times, to the Wars of the Roses, the chaos of the Civil War, the fall of Charles I and Cromwell's...

Stephen's reign was one of the darkest periods of English history. He had promised Henry I that he would support the king's daughter, Matilda, as the rightful heir to the English throne, but when Henry dies in December 1135 he broke his promise and quickly made himself king. Like many of the nobles, he was unwilling to yield the crown to a woman. Civil wars and the battle for the English Crown dominated his reign, and this fascinating book examines the conflict between Ste...

The illustrated book covers all Kings and Queens of England from the first Anglo-Saxon Kings to the current queen, Elizabeth II. It describes how the Crown changed hands as a result of conquest and how the Crown has battled Parliament.Audience:Intended for everyone interested in History of England.FEATURES:- Fully illustrated - Search for words or phrases - Navigate from Table of Contents or read page by page - Add Bookmarks - Designed for optimal navigation on electronic devices with a sm...

Agincourt took place on 25 October 1415 and was a turning-point not only in the Hundred Years War between England and France but also in the history of weaponry. Azincourt (as it is now) is in the Pas-de-Calais, and the French were famously defeated by an army led by Henry V. Henry V's stunning victory revived England's military prestige and greatly strengthened his territorial claims in France. The exhausted English army of about 9,000 men was engaged by 20,000 Frenchmen, but the limited ...

The future William II was born in the late 1050s, the third son of William the Conqueror. The younger William nicknamed Rufus because of his ruddy cheeks at first had not great expectations of succeeding to the throne. The situation changed when Robert, the Conqueror's eldest son, repeatedly rebelled against his father, and Richard, the king's second son, died tragically at the age of just 14. When the Conqueror was dying in 1087, he designated William as heir to the Engli...

1215 – the penultimate year of the reign of a king with the worst reputation of any in our history – saw England engulfed by crisis.Weakened by the loss of Normandy, King John faced insurrection by his disgruntled barons. With the assistance of the Archbishop of Canterbury, they drew up a list of their demands. In June, in a quiet Thames-side water-meadow, John attached his regal seal – under oath – to a charter that set limits on regal power. In return, the barons renewed their vo...

On 15 June 1215, rebel barons forced King John to meet them at Runnymede. They did not trust the King, so he was not allowed to leave until his seal was attached to the charter in front of him.This was Magna Carta. It was a revolutionary document. Never before had royal authority been so fundamentally challenged. Nearly 800 years later, two of the charter's sixty-three clauses are still a ringing expression of freedom for mankind: 'To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or ...