The best books on the middle ages for those with an odd fascination for filth and torture

The past is a foreign country. This is your guidebook. Imagine you could get into a time machine and travel back to the fourteenth century. What would you see? What would you smell? More to the point, where are you going to stay? Should you go to a castle or a monastic guest house? And what are you going to eat? What sort of food are you going to be offered by a peasant or a monk or a lord? This radical new approach turns our entire understanding of history upside down. It shows us that the past is not… show more.

“Powerful, rich with details, moving, humane, and full of important lessons for an age when weapons of mass destruction are loose among us.” — Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb 

The Great Plague is one of the most compelling events in human history—even more so now, when the notion of plague has never loomed larger as a contemporary public concern.

The plague that devastated Asia and Europe in the 14th century has been of never-ending interest to both scholarly and general readers. Many books on the plague rely on statistics to tell the story:… show more.

King Richard III remains one of the most controversial figures in British history. Matthew Lewis's new biography aims to become a definitive account by exploring what is known of his childhood and the impacts it had on his personality and view of the world. He would be cast into insecurity and exile only to become a royal prince before his tenth birthday.

As Richard spends his teenage years under the watchful gaze of his older brother, Edward IV, he is eventually placed in the household of their cousin, the Earl of Warwick, remembered as the Kingmaker; but as the relationship… show more.

Would you become King of England...

If you had to win the crown by conquest?

Henry Tudor’s victory over King Richard III at Bosworth is only the beginning.

Can he end the Wars of the Roses through marriage to the beautiful Princess Elizabeth - and unite the warring houses of Lancaster and York?

Resentment, treachery, rebels and pretenders threaten Henry’s throne.

It seems his prayers are answered, then disaster strikes and Henry must ensure the future of the Tudors.

The third book in the international best-selling Tudor trilogy is based on actual events of courage, adventure, and belief in the… show more.

Rob Cole, a penniless orphan in 11th-century London, is possessed by a mysterious power - he can sense death. A mere apprentice, he dreams of controlling the forces of life and death, of mastering the knowledge that will earn him the title of physician.