Medieval

During the Wars of the Barons in the reign of Henry III, writes Margaret Wade Labarge, everyday life and tastes are recorded in the household rolls of Eleanor de Montfort.

For nearly four hundred years the “Peaceful and Tranquil City” was the administrative centre of Japan, writes George Woodcock, and for more than a thousand years remained the home of the Japanese Emperors.

Seven hundred years ago King Henry III was defeated at Lewes by Simon de Montfort; their abiding joint memorial is Edward the Confessor’s Abbey which Henry III refounded. By Martin Holmes.

Robert H. Schwoebel explains how, in the fifteenth century, the growing power of the Turks prompted a number of European princes to despatch emissaries to the Levant as intelligence officers on the Eastern Question.

John Andrew Boyle describes how, in the early thirteenth century, the Mongol hordes devastated Turkestan and Persia, where the grandson of Genghis Khan founded a dynasty.

By the close of the fourteenth century the English system of surnames had come into general use, many of them deriving from the trades and crafts followed by their bearers.

Townsend Miller describes the union of the crowns of Castile and Aragon, issued in Spain’s greatest century and accomplished amid civil war and in spite of foreign intervention.

Robin Fedden takes us on a visit to snowy Alpine passes where, for three quarters of a century, at the end of the Dark Ages, Saracen forces dominated the chief land routes between Italy and France.

Civil war was always the bane of the Italian city-states. E.R. Chamberlain describes how, at the end of the fourteenth century, it seemed that the whole peninsula might soon be re-united under a single man's control.

James Shiel introduces Jerome, a charming letter-writer and worldly-wise mentor of fashionable proselytes, a learned theologian and fiery controversialist. He lived through a critical period in the history of Western civilization, when the Church established its authority and Rome was sacked by a barbarian foe.