This is a superbly written book which gives you excellent insight into what it would have been like to live back in the 1300s, by the simple method of acting as a travel book for your trip through time. I had several stereotypes upset (they did like to bath and noticed people who smelled bad), wa...
Very nicely written description of what 14th century England would be like if you were to visit. Most history seems to be written about kings and queens or the battles and dates of wars. This is a look at the entire range of classes of people from the poorest on up to royalty and what you could e...
All of this is filtered through the fact that I read this for school. Most people in the class didn't actually read it, though several who did were more enthusiastic than students usually are about assigned readings. I think I like the author's medieval-England analogue better, though I'm less ...
A consistently lucid, compelling "eyewitness" account of every aspect of life in England in the late 1500s under Queen Elizabeth. So much great information to pull out of here. Mortimer shows us not just the ways in which the people of this era were radically different from us, but also all the c...
The past is like visiting a foreign country and what better thing to have than a guide? That is the premise behind author Ian Mortimer’s latest book. If you magically were transposed to say 1585 London, how would you wash your clothes? How much would food cost? What is the most common food to...
An author with a strong track record now tackles the turbulent reign of Henry IV, the first Lancastrian king. By 1405, King Henry IV had already survived at least eight plots to dethrone or kill him in the first six years of his reign. Henry had not always been so unpopular. The son of John of G...
He ordered his uncle to be beheaded; he usurped his father's throne; he taxed his people more than any other previous king, and he started a war which lasted for more than a hundred years. Yet for centuries Edward III (1327-77) was celebrated as the most brilliant of all English monarchs. In this...
The first biography of the evil genius and rebel baron who deposed and murdered Edward II.One night in August 1323 a captive rebel baron, Sir Roger Mortimer, drugged his guards and escaped from the Tower of London. With the king's men-at-arms in pursuit he fled to the south coast, and sailed to F...
The prophecy probably meant the iron, silver and gold crowns of die Holy Roman Emperor, the title currently borne by Ludvig of Bavaria. Ludvig declined to give up his tide, but Edward was not to be outdone. He already had a good claim to wear the sovereign crown of England, and a claim on the ove...