Medieval

The Tower of London, writes E.A. Humphrey Fenn, contains on its walls an extensive collection of prisoners’ graffiti.

W.N. Bryant introduces Bede, the ‘Father of English History’, a Northumbrian Monk who devoted his life to study, teaching and church services.

Anthony Bryer describes how, during the tenth and eleventh centuries, between Turks and Byzantines, Armenian kingdoms led a perilous life. 

Having climbed from partisan leader to king of armies, Brian Boru eventually established himself as the first monarch of a consolidated Ireland.

Gwyn Jones remembers a great Northern historian, who met a violent death half way through the thirteenth century, and who has left us a memorable account of a famous Norwegian chieftain, murdered in 995.

James Edward Holroyd describes how, under the famous Duc de Berry, during a period of strife and trouble, the art of the French medieval miniaturist achieved a splendid flowering.

At the end of the tenth century, writes E.R. Chamberlin, a gifted French Pope aided the bold designs of an ambitious German Emperor.

C.G. Cruickshank describes bows and fire-arms in the early sixteenth century.

Philip Ziegler describes how the devastating Plague reached South-west England in the summer of 1348.

Philip Ziegler describes how, in the mid-fourteenth century, about one third of the population of Western Europe perished from bubonic plague.