The Norsemen eventually penetrated all of England and Scotland, founded cities in Ireland, gained a powerful province in France, controlled Frisia and the modern Netherlands, and raided lands around Spain, passing into the Mediterranean to attack Italy and North Africa. They established the first Russian kingdom, challenged Constantinople, and provided a personal guard for the Byzantine emperor. They settled Iceland, where they developed Europe’s first republic, founded two colonies on Greenland, and explored parts of North America five centuries before Christopher Columbus landed in the Americas. Then, like the abrupt end of a summer thunderstorm, their adventures ceased.

Here is their dramatic story.

Without losing themselves in detail and without sacrificing complexity, the authors discuss the political, social, and economic continuity in Islamic Spain, or al-Andalus, in light of its cultural and intellectual effects upon the rest of Europe. Medieval Christianity, Watt points out, found models of scholarship in the Islamic philosophers and adapted the idea of holy war to its own purposes while the final reunification of Spain under the aegis of the Reconquista played a significant role in bringing Europe out of the Middle Ages. A survey essential to anyone seeking a more complete knowledge of European or Islamic history, the volume also includes sections on literature and philology by Pierre Cachia.

This series of "Islamic surveys" is designed to give the educated reader something more than can be found in the usual popular books. Each work undertakes to survey a special part of the field, and to show the present stage of scholarship here. Where there is a clear picture this will be given; but where there are gaps, obscurities and differences of opinion, these will also be indicated. Full and annotated bibliographies will afford guidance to those who want to pursue their studies further. There will also be some account of the nature and extent of the source material. The series is addressed in the first place to the educated reader, with little or no previous knowledge of the subject; its character is such that it should be of value also to university students and others whose interest is of a more professional kind.

Kings who were insane, infant or imprisoned; feuding families, disputed successions and monarchs executing their brothers; exiled nobles, war with France and enemies forced to unite against a common foe – the history of the Wars of the Roses is so filled with drama that it feels like fiction. In fact, it has inspired fiction. As Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin said: “I’ve drawn on many parts of history, but the Wars of the Roses is probably the one A Song Of Ice and Fire is closest to.”
 

Telling the story of the fifteenth century wars between Lancastrians and Yorkists, The Wars of the Roses follows the course of the conflict from the succession of infant King Henry VI right through to the defeat of rebellions under Henry VII. Its protagonists were twisted by their conflicting loyalties of blood, marriage and, above all, ambition. From mad Henry VI captured in battle to the mystery of the ‘Princes in the Tower’ and the truth behind Richard III’s deformity, the book is a lively account of more than 30 tumultuous years.

Illustrated with more than 200 colour and black-and-white photographs, artworks and maps, The Wars of the Roses reveals the scheming and betrayal, the skullduggery and murder behind the struggle to gain power – and then hold on to it.

Beginning in 789 CE, the Vikings raided monasteries, sacked settlements and invaded the Atlantic coast of Europe and the British Isles. They looted and enslaved their enemies, terrorizing all whom they encountered. But that is only part of their story.

Sailing their famous longboats, they discovered Iceland and America (both by accident) and also sailed up the Seine to Paris (which they sacked). They settled from Newfoundland to Russia, founded Dublin and fought battles as far afield as the Caspian Sea. A thousand years after their demise, traces of the Vikings can be found as far apart as Canada and Turkey. They traded walruses with Inuits, brought Russian furs to Western Europe and took European slaves to Constantinople. Their graves contain Arab silver, Byzantine silks and Frankish weapons and artifacts. Arranged thematically, The Viking Warrior examines the Norsemen through their origins, society, raiding culture, weapons and war tactics, exploration, trade, settlements and kingdoms.

Illustrated with more than 200 colour and black-and-white photographs, maps and artworks, The Viking Warrior is an expertly written account of a people who have long captured the popular imagination.

The Classical Angkor period, from its founding in 802 AD by Jayavarman II, to its mysterious demise, produced hundreds of temples, reservoirs, and other monuments. But why were they built? What did they represent? The Story of Angkor answers these questions. Through an exploration of ancient culture, religion, trade, warfare, ecology, and politics, it gives meaning to the mysterious faces of the Bayon and decodes the beautiful but violent bas-reliefs of Angkor Wat. It also presents Cambodia’s early history and Angkor Wat’s “discovery” by nineteenth-century explorers.

Written in a concise, accessible style, with photos and maps, The Story of Angkor presents an in-depth analysis of the ancient Angkor civilization that will appeal to both readers and travelers.

Highlights

• Uses the temples and monuments themselves to tell the history of Angkor civilization
• A concise guide that is ideal to take to the monuments
• Covers a great breadth of history in an accessible, readable way
• Includes photos and maps

In his delightful treasury of medieval children's verse, Orme does a masterful job of recovering a lively and largely unknown tradition, preserving the playfulness of the originals while clearly explaining their meaning, significance, or context. Poems written in Latin or French have been translated into English, and Middle English has been modernized. Fleas, Flies, and Friars has five parts. The first two contain short lyrical pieces and fragments, together with excerpts from essays in verse that address childhood or were written for children. The third part presents poems for young people about behavior. The fourth contains three long stories and the fifth brings together verse relating to education and school life.

This volume, first published in 1973, derives from a colloquium on medieval history held at Edinburgh University. Its theme was the fl uctuating balance-of-power of Latin West and Greek East, Rome and Constantinople. The book starts with Justinian's attempt to reunite the two halves of the old Roman Empire and then goes on to consider the polarization of Christianity into its Catholic and Orthodox sectors, and the misunderstandings fostered by the Crusades; and ends with the growing power and conquests of Islam in the fourteenth century.

The contributions included in Relations between East and West in the Middle Ages are: Old and New Rome in the Age of Justinian, by W. H. C. Frend; The Tenth Century in Byzantine-Western Relationships, by Karl Leyser; William of Tyre, by R. H. C. Davis; Cultural Relations between East and West in the Twelfth Century, by Anthony Bryer; Innocent III and the Greeks, Aggressor or Apostle? by Joseph Gill; Government in Latin Syria and the Commercial Privileges of Foreign Merchants, by Jonathan Riley-Smith; and Dante and Islam, by R. W. Southern.

Sullivan provides an illuminating and innovative account of Joan's trial and interrogation, placing them in historical, social, and religious context. In the fifteenth century, interrogation was a method of truth-gathering identified not with people like Joan, who was uneducated, but with clerics, like those who tried her. When these clerics questioned Joan, they did so as scholastics educated at the University of Paris, as judges and assistants to judges, and as pastors trained in hearing confessions.

The Interrogation of Joan of Arc traces Joan's conflicts with her interrogators not to differing political allegiances, but to fundamental differences between clerical and lay cultures. Sullivan demonstrates that the figure depicted in the transcripts as Joan of Arc is a complex, multifaceted persona that results largely from these cultural differences. Discerning and innovative, this study suggests a powerful new interpretive model and redefines our sense of Joan and her time.