Crowning Triumph
Westminster Abbey was the focus of the world during the recent coronation. How and why was it built?
Medieval
Old Traditions and New Hopes
The ceremony for coronations may have changed, but its echoes stretch back a millennium.
Toad Testicles, Foul-Beard and Broad-Arse
Nicknames can easily raise an eyebrow, but they have value to the historian beyond humour.
We are Family
From alliances, to open warfare; from tense meetings on bridges, to collective mourning at family funerals: French and English royalty were united by marriage and divided by war.
When Did the Medieval Period End?
As conventional wisdom has it, Europe began to see the light at the end of a dark age sometime around 1500. Four experts try to date the birth of modernity.
Statute of Kilkenny
The parliament of Kilkenny, which passed the eponymous Statute, opened on 18 February 1366.
A ‘Creative Microhistory’ of a Medieval Manor
The distant past is not often illustrated with plentiful descriptions of everyday life. Instead, the picture has to be put together from different sources, piece by piece, like a jigsaw. But there are often still gaps, which can be filled with historically informed creativity.
Take me to the Church
The medieval parish church was the meeting point of many different things, both sacred and secular.
Women at War
How did women experience warfare in early medieval Britain?
The Sin King
The court of William Rufus, son of the Conqueror, was known as a ‘brothel of male prostitutes’.