European history: medieval period, middle ages

Richard III (2 October 1452 - 22 August 1485) was King of England from 1483 until his death in 1485 in the Battle of Bosworth Field.

In this heart-wrenching novel by Sigrid Undset, The Cross brings Kristin's story to a close as the final years of her life are consumed by the Black Death, in the final installment in the well-known Norwegian trilogy, Kristin Lavransdatter.

The story of how Latin and Arabic spread across the Mediterranean to create a cosmopolitan world of letters.

From New York Times bestselling author Sharon Penman, The Reckoning completes the captivating sequence of novels on the struggle between the independent Welsh Princes and the growing English strength which began with Here be Dragons and continued with Falls the Shadow.

Sharon Penman's Fall the Shadow brilliantly portrays the struggle for power in England in the Middle Ages.

Sharon Penman's Here Be Dragons is an absorbing historical novel of power and betrayal, loyalty and political intrigue in thirteenth-century England, Wales and France.

While both regular canons and monasticism with its development into different orders have reached a roughly even level of coverage in research, the history of secular canons is a field which has hitherto been far less in focus of historian scholarship.

In the twelfth century, Christians in Europe began to build a completely new kind of church - soaring, spacious monuments flooded with light from immense windows.

Beginning with their introduction in the eleventh century, and ending with their widespread abandonment in the seventeenth, Marc Morris explores many of the country s most famous castles, as well as some spectacular lesser-known examples.

Described by Christopher Marlowe as the 'She-Wolf of France', Isabella was one of the most notorious femme fatales in history.

A lucid, gripping account of the human side of one of the bloodiest chapters of British history.

The story of the death, in sinister circumstances, of the boy-king Edward V and his younger brother Richard, Duke of York, is one of the most fascinating murder mysteries in English history.

Anyone who has seen The Lion in Winter will remember the vicious, compelling world of the Plantagenets and readers of the romance of Robin Hood will be familiar with the typecasting of Good King Richard, defending Christendom in the Holy Land, and Bad King John who usurps the kingdom in his absence.

There is now no published theory to explain the enigma of the Turin Shroud that fits the known evidence.

In 1086, Domesday Book, perhaps the most remarkable historical document in existence, was compiled.

This is the first major biography for a generation of a truly formidable king.

FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE SILK ROADSDiscover 'the most significant contribution to rethinking the origins and course of the First Crusade for a generation' (Mark Whittow, TLS)'Filled with Byzantine intrigue, in every sense this book is important, compellingly revisionist and impressive' Simon Sebag MontefioreIn 1096, an expedition of extraordinary scale and ambition set off from Western Europe on a mass pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

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.

Who was King Arthur?

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.

The new research in this biography solves the riddle of the disappearance of Joanna of Flanders early in the Hundred Years' War, a leader described by David Hume as 'the most extraordinary woman of the age'.

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?

The momentous events of 1066, the story of invasion, battle and conquest, are well known.

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.

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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.

Edward II is one of the most controversial kings of English history.

50 Medieval Finds from the Portable Antiquities Scheme highlights some of the most important and interesting archaeological objects of medieval date that have been found by the public over the last twenty years and recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS), or reported as Treasure.

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?

Joan of Arc's life and death mark a turning point in the destiny both of France and England and the history of their monarchies.

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.

Richard II is a figure famous in England's national myths - the king who went insane, the narcissist, the tyrant of Shakespeare's play.

Written in 1136 by Geoffrey of Monmouth, the Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain) purported to chronicle the British monarchy from the arrival of the Trojan Brutus, grandson of Aeneas, through to the seventh century AD when the Anglo-Saxons had taken control of the land.