Medieval

The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in 25 years than the Romans did in 400....

Imagine you could travel back to the 14th century. What would you see? What would you smell? More to the point, where are you going to stay? And what are you going to eat....

The Viking Age - from 750 to 1050 saw an unprecedented expansion of the Scandinavian peoples into the wider world. As traders and raiders, explorers and colonists, they ranged from eastern North America to the Asian steppe....

In Search of the Dark Ages is an unrivalled exploration of the origins of English identity, and the best-selling book that established Michael Wood as one of Britain's leading historians....

By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean is nothing less than the story of how humans first started building the globalized world we know today....

Johannes Fried paints a compelling portrait of a devout ruler, a violent time, and a unified kingdom that deepens our understanding of the man often called the father of Europe....

The first major book on Vikings by a Scandinavian author to be published in English reframes the struggle for a North Sea empire and puts listeners in the mindset of Vikings, providing new insight into their goals, values, and what they chose to live and die for....

The Mongol queens of the thirteenth century ruled the greatest empire the world has ever known. Yet sometime near the end of the century, censors cut a section from The Secret History of the Mongols, leaving a single tantalizing quote from Genghis Khan: “Let us reward our female offspring.”...

Medieval queens were seen as mere dynastic trophies, yet many of the Plantagenet queens of the High Middle Ages dramatically broke away from the restrictions imposed on their sex, as Alison Weir shows in this gripping group biography of England's fourteenth-century consorts....

Alison Weir strips away centuries of romantic mythology and prejudice to reveal the lives of England's queens in the century after the Norman Conquest....

Hundred Years War expert Professor Anne Curry presents an overview of the Hundred Years War, the longest-running and the most significant conflict in western Europe in the later Middle Ages....

This is the story of a thousand years, a must-listen narrative history of ambitious aristocrats, family dysfunction, treachery, savage battles, luxury, and madness....

The 14th century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering time of crusades and castles, cathedrals and chivalry; and on the other, a time of ferocity and spiritual agony, a world of chaos and the plague....

A Waterstones Best History Book 2025 A BBC History Magazine Book of the Year 2025 ‘Learned, entertaining and highly approachable’ BOB MORTIMER ‘A treat’ ALICE LOXTON ‘Five stars from me…’ AL MURRAY An unmissable collaboration between two comedy legends – an irresistible...

From a leading expert in Japanese history, this is one of the first full histories of the art and culture of the Samurai warrior....

A vibrant and illuminating exploration of medieval thinking on women's beauty, sexuality, and behavior....

Virginal, chaste, humble, patiently waiting for rescue by brave knights and handsome princes: this idealized—and largely mythical—notion of the medieval noblewoman still lingers. Yet the reality was very different....

Hinduism is one of the world’s great religions, dominating the Indian subcontinent for most of the last millennium, and its largest temple is an unbelievably magnificent structure located in Angkor, Cambodia....

The 15th century Romanian Prince Vlad III Dracula, also known as Vlad the Impaler, is one of the most fascinating personalities of medieval history. Already during his own lifetime, his true story became obscured by a veil of myths....

The fifteenth century was a turbulent age: the Hundred Years War between England and France, and the Wars of the Roses dominated the lives of people both inside and out of the royal courts.

Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness provides a rare and valuable glimpse of Viking customs, dress, table manners, religion, and sexual practices, including the only eyewitness account ever written of a Viking ship cremation.

Crusading fervor gripped Europe for over 200 years, creating one of the most extraordinary, vivid episodes in world history....

Lancater and York is a riveting account of the Wars of the Roses, from the beloved and best-selling historian Alison Weir....

Why did the Vikings sail to England? Were they indiscriminate raiders, motivated solely by bloodlust and plunder? One narrative, the stereotypical one, might have it so.

This erudite book tells the fascinating, often violent story of kings, generals, and the peoples they ruled....

Esta es la historia del encuentro entre dos mundos: Oriente y Occidente conectados por una red de caminos conocida como la Ruta de la Seda, por la que circularon la ambición, las riquezas, el poder y, sobre todo, el conocimiento. Todo comenzó con un puñado de objetos. Valiosas posesiones que pasaban de mano en mano y recorrían miles de kilómetros a través de océanos, desiertos y montañas. Su inmenso valor no dependía solo de su belleza o de la pericia necesaria para elaborarlas; aquellas mercancías exóticas poseían la capacidad de hacer soñar a los que las contemplaban con tierras...

For centuries, medieval history books have told the stories of noble queens, dutiful housewives, and cloistered nuns—but what about the single women who lived, worked, and thrived in medieval Europe? The Secret Lives of Single Medieval Women reveals the overlooked yet fascinating lives of middle age women who did not fit the conventional mold. From unmarried tradeswomen and widows to vowesses and nuns, these women carved their own paths in a world that often sought to define them by their marital status.

The First King of England is a foundational biography of Æthelstan (d. 939), the early medieval king whose territorial conquests and shrewd statesmanship united the peoples, languages, and cultures that would come to be known as the “kingdom of the English.”

A heroic queen who shaped the course of history. Isabel of Spain led with courage during the Reconquista, reformed her nation through justice, and launched a new era by supporting Columbus’s voyages. Her bold, faith-filled reign eclipses even that of England’s Elizabeth. This is the first major English biography of Isabel in decades — scholarly, detailed, and deeply inspiring.

In the heart of medieval Britain, the spectacle of execution was a grim theatre of power and control—as ordinary a sight as the bustling market or the tolling church bell. Beneath the public rituals of punishment, however, lies a quieter, more haunting story: the marks left behind by the condemned. As men and women awaited their final moments, some carved simple scratches, initials, or symbols into the stone walls of prison cells, the wood of church pews, and even the beams of the gallows.

A World Unbroken explores an alternate history in which humanity never faced the devastation of plague. Through a series of deeply researched and humanized chapters, the book examines how uninterrupted population growth, stable communities, and the absence of mass mortality would have shaped every aspect of society, science, and culture.

The Plague explores the profound changes and enduring continuities that shaped European society in the wake of the Black Death and other crises of the 1300s.

Ripples Across Time explores the sweeping changes that shaped Europe from the Middle Ages to the dawn of modernity. Through a series of thematic chapters, the book examines the continent’s demographic shifts, the evolution of social structures, the rise of cities and the middle class, the impact of wars and religion, and the flourishing of art, science, and literature.

La Orden del Temple y sus caballeros, su historia y su mitología siguen constituyendo a día de hoy uno de los grandes episodios de nuestra historia. Su vinculación con algunas de las reliquias sagradas, su origen o su abrupto final continúan encandilando a historiadores, buscadores de enigmas y aficionados al misterio, los cuales recorren los antiguos parajes que llevan a los castillos de la Hermandad Blanca buscando las huellas de un saber oculto que, quizás con suerte, el tiempo haya guardado.

These are essays on medieval history, and the crusades especially, written from what can broadly be considered a Marxist approach.