European history: medieval period, middle ages

Written by Europe s first professional woman writer, The Treasure of the City of Ladies offers advice and guidance to women of all ages and from all levels of medieval society, from royal courtiers to prostitutes.

Thoroughly updated and with a new foreword'The Viking Age is shot through with the spirit of adventure.

The 'Northern Crusades', inspired by the Pope's call for a Holy War, are less celebrated than those in the Middle East, but they were also more successful: vast new territories became and remain Christian, such as Finland, Estonia and Prussia.

From Thomas Becket's early life as a merchant's son and his time as the Archbishop of Canterbury to his assassination in the Cathedral itself, this enlightening book brings to life a colossal figure of British history.

For six centuries the Republic of Venice was a maritime empire, its sovereign power extending throughout much of the eastern Mediterranean an empire of coasts, islands and isolated fortresses by which, as Wordsworth wrote, the mercantile Venetians 'held the gorgeous east in fee'.

The two-and-a-half centuries after 1066 were momentous ones in the history of Britain.

'The most accessible, up-to-date introduction to its subject .

Medieval Iceland was unique amongst Western Europe, with no foreign policy, no defence forces, no king, no lords, no peasants and few battles.

In the 13th century, a group of heretics in southwest France, the Cathars, became a serious threat to the Catholic church.

In this vivid account, Kryiacos C Markides introduces to us the rich and intricate world of Daskalso, The Magus of Strovolos.

With wit, intelligence and his trademark eye for riveting detail, John Julius Norwich has brought together the most important and fascinating events from his trilogy of the rise and fall of the Byzantine empire.

At its height Renaissance Florence was a centre of enormous wealth, power and influence.

A wave of internal conquest, settlement and economic growth took place in Europe during the High Middle Ages, which transformed it from a world of small separate communities into a network of powerful kingdoms with distinctive cultures.

Since its first publication thirty years ago, Timothy Ware s book has become established throughout the English-speaking world as the standard introduction to the Orthodox Church.

Gerald of Wales was among the most dynamic and fascinating churchmen of the twelfth century.

This compelling Icelandic history describes the life of King Harald Hardradi, from his battles across Europe and Russia to his final assault on England in 1066, less than three weeks before the invasion of William the Conqueror.

Throughout Britain's history, one factor above all others has determined the fate of the nation: its navy.

For a thousand years an extraordinary empire made possible Europe s transition to the modern world: Byzantium.

Asser's Life of King Alfred, written in 893, is a revealing account of one of the greatest of medieval kings.

There is no more haunting, compelling period in Britain's history than the later middle ages.

The Chronicles of Froissart (1337-1410) are one of the greatest contemporary records of fourteenth-century England and France.

This chronicle of the Byzantine Empire, beginning in 1025, shows a profound understanding of the power politics that characterized the empire and led to its decline.

A revised edition of Anna Komnene's Alexiad, to replace our existing 1969 edition.

'Wonderfully written and characteristically brilliant' Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads'Elegant, readable .

Written following the collapse of Rome's secular control over western Europe, the History of Gregory (c.

A comprehensive analysis of European craft guilds through eight centuries of economic historyGuilds ruled many crafts and trades from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution, and have always attracted debate and controversy.

Einhard's Life of Charlemagne is an absorbing chronicle of one of the most powerful and dynamic of all medieval rulers, written by a close friend and adviser.

A new departure in Penguin Classics: a book containing one of the greatest of all Renaissance woodcut sequences - Holbein's bravura danse macabreOne of Holbein's first great triumphs, The Dance of Death is an incomparable sequence of tiny woodcuts showing the folly of human greed and pride, with each image packed with drama, wit and horror as a skeleton mocks and terrifies everyone from the emperor to a ploughman.

During the Middle Ages in Europe, some sexual and gendered behaviors were labeled "e;sodomitical"e; or evoked the use of ambiguous phrases such as the "e;unmentionable vice"e; or the "e;sin against nature.

A new history of Christian-Muslim relations in the Carolingian period that provides a fresh account of events by drawing on Arabic as well as western sourcesIn the year 802, an elephant arrived at the court of the Emperor Charlemagne in Aachen, sent as a gift by the ?

A groundbreaking history of how the Black Death unleashed revolutionary change across the medieval world and ushered in the modern ageIn 1346, a catastrophic plague beset Europe and its neighbours.

Medieval Italian communes are known for their violence, feuds, and vendettas, yet beneath this tumult was a society preoccupied with peace.

A groundbreaking history that puts early and medieval West Africa in a global contextPick up almost any book on early and medieval world history and empire, and where do you find West Africa?

At the height of the Middle Ages, a peculiar system of perpetual exile-or abjuration-flourished in western Europe.

In the wake of modern genocide, we tend to think of violence against minorities as a sign of intolerance, or, even worse, a prelude to extermination.

Unrivalled Influence explores the exceptional roles that women played in the vibrant cultural and political life of medieval Byzantium.

Amid so much twenty-first-century talk of a "e;Christian-Muslim divide"e;--and the attendant controversy in some Western countries over policies toward minority Muslim communities--a historical fact has gone unnoticed: for more than four hundred years beginning in the mid-seventh century, some 50 percent of the world's Christians lived and worshipped under Muslim rule.

Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent is the first book to fully explore the expansive and ill-understood role that Russia's ancient Christian faith has played in the fall of Soviet Communism and in the rise of Russian nationalism today.

The horrors of the Great Famine (1315-1322), one of the severest catastrophes ever to strike northern Europe, lived on for centuries in the minds of Europeans who recalled tales of widespread hunger, class warfare, epidemic disease, frighteningly high mortality, and unspeakable crimes.

An in-depth exploration of documentary forgery at the turn of the first millennium Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium takes a fresh look at documentary forgery and historical memory in the Middle Ages.

An examination of coined money and its significance to rulers, aristocrats and peasants in early medieval EuropeBetween the end of the Roman Empire in the fifth century and the economic transformations of the twelfth, coined money in western Europe was scarce and high in value, difficult for the majority of the population to make use of.

Mass-produced of tin-lead alloys and cheap to make and purchase, medieval badges were brooch-like objects displaying familiar images.

Edward I and his offspring, especially Edward II, are not shrouded by the mists of time.

"e;An illuminating and entertaining read .

"e;A fascinating study of the also-rans and almost-made-its of medieval history .

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"e;An illuminating and entertaining read .

The author of The Unseen Terror "e;looks at the fortunes of Richard II and Charles VI of France in a fascinating account of that war"e; (Books Monthly).

This study sheds light on half-forgotten figures of the Montfortian wars such as Sir John Deyville and Sir Adam Gurdon.