European history: medieval period, middle ages

'A fascinating story about a religion in a surprisingly precarious position' Dan Jones, Sunday Times'Superb storytelling .

No English king has suffered a worse press than King John: Bad King John, the Sheriff of Nottingham and Robin Hood, Magna Carta - but how to disentangle myth and truth?

In 476 AD the last of Rome's emperors was deposed by a barbarian general, the son of one of Attila the Hun's henchmen, and the imperial vestments were despatched to Constantinople.

From the bestselling author of Meetings With Remarkable Manuscripts, a captivating account of the last surviving relic of Thomas Becket The assassination of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral on 29 December 1170 is one of the most famous events in European history.

Although the young Edward VI's death in 1553 led to resounding defeat for his Protestant allies, his reign has a significance out of all proportion to its brief six-year span.

Henry III was a medieval king whose long reign continues to have a profound impact on us today.

On Christmas Day 1066, William, duke of Normandy was crowned in Westminster, the first Norman king of England.

An enthralling account of day-to-day life in a medieval French village.

The acclaimed Penguin Monarchs series: short, fresh, expert accounts of England's rulers - now in paperbackEdward I (1272-1307) is one of the most commanding of all English rulers.

'To be a medieval king was a job of work .

Richard II (1377-99) came to the throne as a child, following the long, domineering, martial reign of his grandfather Edward III.

William II (1087-1100), or William Rufus, will always be most famous for his death: killed by an arrow while out hunting, perhaps through accident or perhaps murder.

Henry II (1154-89) through a series of astonishing dynastic coups became the ruler of an enormous European empire.

'David Carpenter deserves to replace Sir James Holt as the standard authority, and an unfailingly readable one too.

The story of the First Crusade, as witnessed by contemporary writers'O day so ardently desired!

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

Throughout history, some books have changed the world.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.