European history: medieval period, middle ages

Like his crusading father before him, Simon de Montfort's combination of charisma and fearlessness made him one of the greatest men of his age.

In July 1484 Tudor agent William Collingbourne - executed for treason in 1484 - tacked up a lampoon to the walls of St Paul's Cathedral:'The Catte, the Ratte and Lovell our dogge rulyth all Englande under a hogge.

Since 1997 the Portable Antiquities Scheme has recorded almost 1.

Godwin and his family dominated English politics for almost half a century, establishing themselves as the most influential and powerful dynasty in Anglo-Saxon England.

Hilary Green takes the reader on a journey through the complex developing trade of the Middle Ages, which is the foundation of trade today.

Eight kings of England were the named Henry, but only two of them were born as heirs to the throne and these - the third and sixth - proved to be the weakest.

Merlin remains the most famous and familiar image of the magician we possess.

The Norman Conquest in the eleventh century is one of the best-known events in English history, but the French attempts to invade England three hundred years later are largely ignored and misunderstood.

Beverley, founded around AD 700 by St John of Beverley during the time of the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria, was an important centre of trade from the Middle Ages onwards.

Four generations of Brandon men lived and served six English kings, the most famous being Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, best friend and brother-in-law to King Henry VIII.

When did the term 'Princes in the Tower' come into usage, who invented it, and to whom did it refer?

William the Conqueror's intellect is said to have remained clear right up to his death.

People have been looking for the sites of the long-lost and mysterious battles of King Arthur for a thousand years.

In the early middle ages the Christian presence in the Middle East took a series of blows from often superior Muslim forces, only for a fresh wave of Crusaders to regain territory.

Edward the Elder succeeded his father Alfred the Great to the kingdom of Wessex, but was largely overlooked by his contemporaries (at least in terms of the historical record) and to a greater or lesser extent by later historians.

Robert the Bruce is a man of both history and legend.

Many people know about Wessex, the 'Last Kingdom' of the Anglo-Saxons to fall to the Northmen, but another kingdom, Mercia, once enjoyed supremacy over not only Wessex, but all of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

This fascinating book explores the status of women in medieval England, both before and after the Norman Conquest.

On his deathbed William the Conqueror divided his property between his three sons, Robert, William and Henry.

Henry II became King of England in 1154 after twenty years of civil war.

King Richard III remains one of the most controversial figures in British history.

'Old John of Gaunt, time-honour'd Lancaster'John of Gaunt (1340-1399) was the son of one king and the father of another.

What unacknowledged theme can be found across 250 years of English history?

Philippa of Hainault: Mother of the English Nation is the first full-length biography of the queen at the centre of the some of the most dramatic events in English history.

Whilst Richard I is one of medieval England's most famous kings he is also the most controversial.

This ground-breaking book traces the story of castles at war in England and Wales from their introduction by the Normans in the eleventh century until the end of the reign of Henry VIII in the sixteenth century.

These are the stories of women, famous, infamous and unknown, who shaped the course of medieval history.

thelflaed, eldest daughter of Alfred the Great, has gone down in history as an enigmatic and almost legendary figure.

Harold Godwinson, King of England, was unable to defend his realm from William the Conqueror's invading Norman army in 1066.

Evidence of the foulness and cruelty of the greatest catastrophe ever to hit London is still being unearthed under the streets of the capital today.

The Anglo-Saxon age was one of great change and unrest.

The identity of Robin Hood has been questioned many times since the Outlaw of Sherwood first sprang to fame in the twelfth century.

For a medieval English king, delegation was a necessary evil; and nowhere more necessary - nor more potentially disastrous - than on the Anglo-Welsh borders.

Henry III became King of England within days of his ninth birthday.

To our modern minds, the Middle Ages seem to mix the well-known and familiar with wildly alien concepts and circumstances.

Like his crusading father before him, Simon de Montfort's combination of charisma, determination and fearlessness, reinforced by a wife with similar qualities, made him one of the greatest men of his age.

The Wars of the Roses call to mind bloody battles, treachery and deceit, and a cast of characters known to us through fact and fiction: Edward IV, Elizabeth Woodville, Richard III, Warwick the Kingmaker, the Princes in the Tower, Henry Tudor.

In contrast to most of Scotland, the north-western coast and the islands beyond were a region of mixed political control as well as culture into the sixteenth century.

Richard III.

Immortalised by the chronicler Froissart as the most beautiful woman in England and the most loved, Joan was the wife of the Black Prince and the mother of Richard II, the first Princess of Wales and the only woman ever to be Princess of Aquitaine.

Have you ever wondered what life was like for the ordinary housewife in the Middle Ages?

The Anglo-Saxon era was a pivotal one in England's history, and formed much of the England that we recognise today.

1066 saw three kings of England, the last of whom was William, Duke of Normandy.

The Wars of the Roses were a series of brutal conflicts between rival branches of the Plantagenet family - the Lancastrians and the Yorkists.

Isabella of France married Edward II in January 1308, and afterwards became one of the most notorious women in English history.

The medieval period is often thought of as the Dark Ages, a period of cultural stagnation and little economic and political advancement.

In the second half of the fifteenth century, for over thirty years, civil war tore England apart.

Few English monarchs had to fight harder for the right to rule than King Edward IV - Shakespeare's glorious son of York.

In the competition for remarkable queens, Eleanor of Aquitaine tends to win.

The Viking Conquest of England in 1016 - a far tougher and more brutal campaign than the Norman Conquest exactly half a century later - saw two great warriors, the Danish prince Cnut and his equally ruthless English opponent King Edmund Ironside, fight an epic campaign.