‘Beautifully written and superbly executed’ Times'A joyous romp around England’s dark past' Suzie Feay, GuardianFrom the author of the bestselling The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain, this is a stunningly high-concept historical novel that is both as daring as it is gripping, and perfect for fans of Conn Iggulden, SJ Parris and Kate Mosse.December 1348: With the country in the grip of the Black Death, brothers...

Brought to you by Penguin.In the latest volume of his celebrated series of Time Traveller's Guides - after the Middle Ages, Elizabethan England and Restoration Britain - Ian Mortimer turns to what is arguably the most-loved period in British history: the Regency (aka Georgian England). Bookended by the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 and the death of George IV in 1830, this is the age of Jane Austen and the Romantic poets; the paintings of John Constable ...

The essential introduction to the Middle Ages by the author of The Time Traveller's Guide series— " the most remarkable medieval historian of our time" ( The Times, UK).We tend to think of the Middle Ages as a dark, backward and unchanging time characterized by violence, ignorance and superstition. By contrast we believe progress arose from science and technological innovation, and that inventions of recent centuri...

You might run for fitness. You might run for speed. But ultimately, running is about much more than the physical act itself. It is about the challenges we face in life, and how we measure up to them. It is about companionship, endurance, ambition, hope, conviction, determination, self-respect and inspiration. It is about how we choose to live our lives, and what it means to share our values with other people.In this year-long memoir, which might be described as a historian’s take o...

Brought to you by Penguin.We tend to think about the Middle Ages as a dark and backward time, characterised by violence, ignorance and superstition. We believe that life was unchanging over the period, so if a peasant fell asleep in in the year 1000 and woke up six hundred years later, he would return to a world that was instantly recognisable. We hold that change is facilitated by science and technological innovation, and that it was the inventions of recent centu...

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there...Imagine you could travel back to the fourteenth century. What would you see, and hear, and smell? Where would you stay? What are you going to eat? And how are you going to test to see if you are going down with the plague?In The Time Traveller's Guide... Ian Mortimer's radical new approach turns our entire understanding of history upside down. History is not just something to be stud...

In a contest of change, which century from the past millennium would come up trumps? Imagine the Black Death took on the female vote in a pub brawl, or the Industrial Revolution faced the internet in a medieval joust – whose side would you be on? In this hugely entertaining book, celebrated historian Ian Mortimer takes us on a whirlwind tour of Western history, pitting one century against another in his quest to measure change.

The past is a foreign country - this is your guide.We think of Queen Elizabeth I's reign (1558-1603) as a golden age. But what was it actually like to live in Elizabethan England? If you could travel to the past and walk the streets of London in the 1590s, where would you stay? What would you eat? What would you wear? Would you really have a sense of it being a glorious age? And if so, how would that glory sit alongside the vagrants, diseases, violence, sexism and ...

The past is a foreign country: this is your guidebook.If you could travel back in time, the period from 1660 to 1700 would make one of the most exciting destinations in history. It is the age of Samuel Pepys and the Great Fire of London; bawdy comedy and the libertine court of Charles II; Christopher Wren in architecture, Henry Purcell in music and Isaac Newton in science - the civil wars are over and a magnificent new era has begun.But what would it really...

In June 1405, King Henry IV stopped at a small Yorkshire manor house to shelter from a storm. That night he awoke screaming that traitors were burning his skin. His instinctive belief that he was being poisoned was understandable: he had already survived at least eight plots to dethrone or kill him in the first six years of his reign.Henry IV had not always been so unpopular. In his youth he had been a great chivalric champion and crusader. The son of John of Gaunt, he was courteou...

From the bestselling author of the Time Traveller's GuidesIn these sparkling A to Zs, time-travelling historian Ian Mortimer visits four classic periods of English history: the fourteenth century, the Elizabethan age, the Restoration and the Regency.As he ranges from the Great Plague to the Great Freeze, from Armada to Austen, and from tobacco to toenails, he shines a light into corners of history we never knew were so fascinating -- or so revealing of the wh...

The past is a foreign country: t****his is your guidebook.Imagine you could get into a time machine and travel back to the fourteenth century. What would you see? What would you smell? More to the point, where are you going to stay? Should you go to a castle or a monastic guesthouse? And what are you going to eat? What sort of food are you going to be offered by a peasant or a monk or a lord?This is the most astonishing social histo...