The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century

Time Traveller's Guides #1

by Ian Mortimer

Imagine you could get into a time machine and travel back to the 14th century. This text sets out to explain what life was like in the most immediate way, through taking the reader to the Middle Ages, and showing everything from the horrors of leprosy and war to the ridiculous excesses of roasted larks and haute couture.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Medieval, Historical, British Literature, Medieval History, Travel

342 pages, Hardcover

First published October 2, 2008

About the author

AKA James Forrester.

Dr Ian Mortimer is a historian and novelist, best known for his Time Traveller's Guides series. He has BA, MA, PhD and DLitt degrees from the University of Exeter and UCL. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and was awarded the Alexander Prize by the Royal Historical Society in 2004. Home is the small Dartmoor town of Moretonhampstead, which he occasioanlly introduces in his books. His most recet book, 'Medieval Horizons' looks at how life changed between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries.

He also writes in other genres: his fourth novel 'The Outcasts of Time' won the 2018 Winston Graham Prize for historical fiction. His earlier trilogy of novels set in the 1560s were published under his middle names, James Forrester. In 2017 he wrote 'Why Running Matters' - a memoir of running in the year he turned fifty.

At present he is concentrating on writing history books that have experimental perspectives on the past. One example is a study of England as it would have appeared to the people living in his house over the last thousand years. This is provisionally entitled 'The History of England through the Windows of an Ordinary House'. It is due for completion in December 2024 and publication in 2026.

Reviews

[LeeAnne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very fun, entertaining book!
Here are a few things I learned:



The Landscape:

There are almost no conifer or evergreen trees in the middle ages so the winter skyline is particularly bleak.

There are no grey squirrels, only red ones. The grey variety has yet to reach Britain.

Cattle and sheep are smaller than their modern counterparts.

There are no wolves. The last English wolf was killed in North Lancashire in the 14th century.



The People:

Half of the population is under the age of 21, and most people will die before age 30. Most of the population is immature and inexperienced. People marry at age 14. Many commanders in the Army are still in their teens. Imagine a nation being run by a bunch of hormonal teenage boys!

Women are blamed for all intellectual and moral weaknesses in society and are basically viewed as deformed men.

The average medieval person is much shorter than the average person today, although nobility were about the same height as today. This disparity in height is due to genetic selection as well as differences in diet. The extra height gives a nobleman a considerable advantage in a fight.

Speaking of fighting, it is not unusual to come across men who have lost eyes, ears, and limbs in battles. A surprisingly large amount of men have to hobble around without a leg or with foot injuries that never healed correctly.


Food:

The main staple of food is bread & something called "pottage" a thick stew of oats or peas (green pottage) or leeks (white pottage) that has been boiled into a mush for several hours over a fire. If you have a garden, you will throw in some herbs, garlic, and cabbage. Add leftover bread crumbs as a thickener and that's your daily meal when you are not eating plain bread.

Most peasants have very few opportunities to eat meat, dairy, or fish. Pickled and salted herring is the only kind of fish they would have access to eat.

If you are wealthy and have a well-kept fruit orchard you are very lucky and can make preserves from apples, pears, berries, plums, and grapes.


A Medieval Street in York, England

The Language:

In 1300 the nobility speak French, not English! If you can't speak French, you can't command any respect. Only the lowly poor lowly peasants speak English. Nobody authorizes literature written in English. Not until 1350 when King Edward the III, who spoke English, expressed pride in the English language, did aristocrats begin to speak English as well as French.

Hygiene:

People rarely bathed or did laundry but they did try to rinse their hands with water before eating.

A peasant usually had only one set of clothes.

Health:

In the Great Plague, 35%-45% of the entire population is wiped out in just 9 months. Thousands of villages are left empty. If you're lucky enough to avoid catching the plague, don't relax too much, leprosy or tuberculosis might still get you.

If you do get sick and are wealthy enough to pay a physician, he won't need to see you in person to treat you because medical diagnoses are based on astronomy. You'll; also be diagnosed by the color and smell of your urine and the taste of your blood.

There is so much more in this book, but I can't tell you everything! Please read it! It's really good!

[Nicky · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a history book, this is an interesting format and it's reasonably engaging, though by the end I was starting to get worn down by the sheer level of detail. But what bothered me was that apparently, if you want to time travel, you'd better be male: there's some lip service paid to actually discussing women's role in society, with some references to the kind of work women did (mostly: make ale, I gather), and quite a lot of reference to the kind of clothes women wore, and how likely women were to be assaulted and raped, but. We hear about monks and not about nuns, about merchants and not about their wives, about farmers and not their daughters.

And don't give me the excuse about that not being interesting to read about: nor is intricate detail about what a monk can eat on which days, for most people.

In summary: to time travel, apparently you have to be male. And only men are interesting. Slightly disappointed I paid for this book right now.

[Petra X · Rating 5 out of 5]

These books on going back in time present the times as great political machinations from the King (or Queen) in London. Food grown locally and cooked from scratch each day. Clothes sewn to last. No vehicles or chemical fumes but walking - or for the rich, riding - in the open air. Hard work, but rewarding, a day that starts when the sun rises and finished when the candles sputter out.

But what they don't say is that no one much knew what was going on in London if they didn't live close as there wasn't any mass communication and by the time the horses brought the post, changed at every Post House my parents lived in a Post House at one time. It is where the horses were changed for fresh ones combined with an inn it must have been like Chinese whispers. A good story, but who knew how much was true. But then nothing much happened fast then anyway.

Food might have been plentiful in the spring and summer, but what about the winter? Porridge andvegetables (no potatoes, no rice, no spaghetti) must have got boring as the mainstay of every day. And whose clothes were sewn to last? The clothes of the wealthy, everyone else wore handmedowns or ragged outfits. Who of the poor had a tailor and the time to sew fine stitches after work was done given that it was only candle light in the evening?

People hardly ever went anywhere. They didn't get time off, they mostly had neither horses nor money and a journey to the nearest city for market day. These towns and cities were tiny, smelly with no sewage but everyone putting out their night soil and emptying their piss pots into the street below.

There weren't many books. Musical instruments were expensive. But beer was cheap and that led quite often to sex, people's most enjoyable occupation. For much of this time period it was mandatory to go to Church, it was a crime not to. So Saturday nights were on the booze and fornication and Sunday was repentance in case of hellfire, which most people it seemed firmly believed in .

The Church was the biggest landholder, employer and source of education of the day, and it firmly disapproved of all this drunkenness and whoring around and the consequent illegitimate babies. No one else minded that much though. But some did, and come the time of Oliver Cromwell and the deposing of King Charles who didn't really mind debauchery and dancing, and liked a bit of gourmand excess and seduction himself, they took off.

And that's how you got America.
--------------------------------------
What do you think was the worst thing about the middle ages, Stuart or Tudor and the rest as well? Do you think it was there hardly any books, no internet or cell phones and it must have been really effing boring? Or perhaps everything was ok, but lack of medical care, or worse, no fries. They didn't have potatoes in England back then, so no fries to go along with the burger. So what do you think was the worst thing about waybackthen?

[Nataliya · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there”.

It’s easy to think of history as a boring litany of dates and kings and battles, endless murky politics and government systems, and who conquered whom. But that’s only one side of history, and the one that, while mattering in the long run, probably made little difference to people who actually lived it.

“Welcome to a place of pride, wealth, authority, crime, justice, high art, stench, and beggary.”

What we don’t usually get when learning about history is what it actually was to *live* at that time. As Mortimer asks, how would you live your life in the 14th century England? What would your city or village look like? What about your house or castle? If you were a time traveler visiting the Middle Ages, what would you wear? How would you get from one place to another? What would you eat? Where would you stay? How about bodily functions? How would you greet people? What if you got sick? How about crime you may encounter? How about your hygiene practices? How do you measure time? What would a job pay you and what can you afford to buy with your wages? How about crime and law enforcement? And what would you do for entertainment — music, plays, jousting, archery, hunting — or perhaps bearbaiting?

Ian Mortimer, armed with gentle humor, engaging and accessible prose and a myriad of details, takes the reader on an immersive journey through the 14th century England — from stunning cathedrals to Shitbrook, from castles and manor houses to slums and peasant huts. The issues we see are on the human rather than political scale (“With forty thousand permanent citizens and sometimes as many as one hundred thousand mouths to feed and bowels to evacuate, it is impossible for a city with no sewage system to cope.”) In this way he succeeds at making medieval England feel (and apparently smell) like a real place, inhabited by real people going about their business, with all the details that matter.

This was the sparsely populated world, with London boasting 40,000 inhabitants and most other “large” cities about 4000 or so, with the population of about five million halving over the century with the Great Plague playing a key role there. And it was the country of very young people, with half of the population under 21 years old. A lot of brutality of the era makes sense when you realize that things were run by very young hormonal men with still developing brains and testosterone urges overruling reason. It was a cruel and violent world, especially by our current standards — but Mortimer reminds us time and again that the world was different and those standards don’t apply to the world seven centuries past.

“It is generally said that medieval men are in their prime in their twenties, mature in their thirties, and growing old in their forties. This means that men have to take on responsibility at a relatively young age. In some towns citizens as young as twelve can serve on juries. Leaders in their twenties are trusted and considered deserving of respect.”

“Medieval boys are expected to work from the age of seven and can be hanged for theft at the same age. They can marry at the age of fourteen and are liable to serve in an army from the age of fifteen.”

“As for women, you can advance these “prime,” “mature,” and “growing old” periods of life by six or seven years. A woman is in her prime at seventeen, mature at twenty-five, and growing old by her mid-thirties. In the words of one of Chaucer’s characters, a thirty-year-old woman is just “winter forage.”

Before you sit down to dinner in medieval England, keep in mind — most of our “staple” foods have not made their way to England yet. Forget potatoes or rice — you won’t even find carrots. “If an unchanging diet of boiled bacon, rye bread, and peas does not appeal, then consider yourself lucky not to be stuck in a house in which the bacon has gone rancid, the flour has been eaten by rats, and the peas have become damp and rotted.” You won’t get a salad either — “There is a widespread understanding that green vegetables—cabbages in particular—are not good for you, and potentially harmful if raw.” And you may be careful when buying food in town — “London records are full of cases where a dead pig has been decomposing in the town ditch for a week or so and then ends up being scavenged by a pie-maker. Sometimes medieval people take recycling too far.” To be safe, if you have a chance, you should always try to eat in a nobleman’s house, especially if you fancy a dolphin course.

“A butcher selling bad meat can expect to be dragged through the streets of the town on a hurdle and then placed in the pillory with the rotten meat being burnt under him. Likewise a baker selling bad bread. A vintner caught selling foul wine is dragged to the pillory on a hurdle, forced to drink a draught of the offending liquor, and then set in the pillory, where the remainder of the liquid is poured over his head. The sweetness of the revenge makes up for the sourness of the wine.”

If you are a fashionista, Mortimer has that covered. Who would have thought that the 14th century was also a time of fashion revolution, especially for men? “In medieval society, what you wear denotes what you are.” Not only are you supposed to dress according to your social station, you were expected to be punished if you dared to dress above it. And as buttons are invented, a fashion revolution ensues. But no knitted items — that art, sadly, was yet unknown.

“While the traditional image of knights in armour is accurate and widely accepted, the equally representative image of knights wearing corsets and suspender belts is perhaps less well known.”

��In 1370 another writer remarks with shock that tunics have now grown so short that you can see the outlines of men’s bottoms.”



“In the modern world, in which female clothing is more often designed to attract the attention of the opposite sex, the radical sexualization of men’s clothing is doubly surprising. It is not women’s skirt lengths which change with the times but those of men. No wonder monastic chroniclers feel obliged to pass comment: they blame the men for displaying very short skirts and well-packed hose, and they blame the women for being delighted by what they see.”

I’ve said before that the Middle Ages are basically the shady back alley of history. What comes to mind when you think about those centuries probably includes filth and disease and ignorance and superstition and feudalism and the Black Death. It seems to be the area of history where one should not venture in unarmed and unaccompanied. But Mortimer goes to lengths to point out the difference in standards and what cleanliness would have meant back then as opposed to now, and it provides an interesting perspective.

The 14th century was the time of the Great Plague, the Black Death. “By 1400 about half of all those born over the previous seventy years have died of plague.” While your “normal” history book would focus on the often eventually positive implications on economy and societal development, Mortimer decides on the approach that shows the devastation to those living at that time:

“Imagine a disease were to wipe out 40 percent of the modern population of the UK—more than 25 million people. Now imagine a historian in the future discussing the benefits of your death and the deaths of your partner, your children, and your friends … You would want to cry out, or hang your head in despair, that historians could blithely comment on the benefits of such suffering. There is no shadow of a doubt that every one of these people you see in 1348—whether they will die or survive—deserves your compassion. When you see women dragging their parents’ and children’s corpses into ditches, weeping and screaming—when you listen to a man who has buried all five of his sons with his own hands, and, in his distress, he tells you that there was no divine service when he did so, and that the death bell did not sound—you know that these people have entered a chasm of grief beyond description.”

And then, of course, there are still leprosy and tuberculosis, and childbirth, and starvation, and myriads of other horrible ways to die, not to mention wars and everyday violence. And if those haven’t killed you, then seeking medical care probably will — unless you are lucky enough to have John of Arderne fix your pesky anal fistula: “He also has a positive attitude to treatment: not only must a surgeon have clean hands and be skillful, he must also have the ability to make his patient laugh. This is not easy when the patient in question is bent double and the surgeon is sewing up three large abscesses in the side of his rectum.”

“Every single pregnancy is thus like a game of Russian roulette, played with a fifty-barrel gun. A dozen children is like firing that fifty-barrel gun a dozen times. Twenty-two percent of women will not survive that number of pregnancies. Often it is not the birth itself which is fatal but the blood loss afterwards. As for the babies, a much greater proportion do not survive the ordeal. The exact rate is unknown but more than 10 percent are stillborn. Of those who do survive the birth, and live long enough to be baptized, one in six will be dead before their first birthday.”

(I need to quote that to every new-age person insisting on freebirthing).

“So, as long as you can get enough to eat, and can avoid all the various lethal infections, the dangers of childbirth, lead poisoning, and the extreme violence, you should live a long time.”

—————

This is the most fun I’ve ever had with any history book, which is why it’s my third time rereading it. It’s just so interesting and well-presented, and really does what it sets out to do — bring the world of seven centuries past into focus and making it and it’s inhabitants feel real.

5 stars.

[Orsolya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most of us who read history or historical fiction set in Medieval (or even Tudor) England, can agree on one thing: we can’t understand the ways of life “back then” properly because we tend to apply modern morals and standards to history. However, with the “The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England”, readers can finally understand Medieval times. I guarantee you will never look at a history book the same again…

Divided into main sections such as the landscape, people, medieval character, what to eat/drink, etc; Ian Mortimer dives deep into medieval life. His depth of information is staggering (but never boring or overwhelming) and allows the reader to fully understand medieval life which extends beyond knights and jousts. Consider it a ‘Medieval Times 101’ crash course, as Mortimer focuses on the macro view of life versus individual kings or events (although he does touch upon specifics) as we are used to reading. Although academic in topic, Mortimer’s writing style is anything but; as it is easy to understand, descriptive, and witty.

The Time Traveler’s Guide cleared up so much information in my mind which has been swimming around from the countless history books I have figuratively consumed. The ranks of clergy, description of the privy seal (and other seals), and even “fun” factoids such as the inception of “acres”, the defining term “o’clock”, and even surnames (John Ilbertson used to be John, son of Ilbert) are included and explained in a clear and rational way. The reader truly feels like he or she is visiting the past (sort of like Scrooge with the Ghost of Christmas Past), observing life and almost being apart of it. Mortimer is rich, colorful, and very informative. There ARE some moments of overwhelming presentations, but that is due to the lack of standardization in England during that time and not due to Mortimer’s writing style or expertise. My favorite realization? I FINALLY understood the differences between pennies, shillings, marks, and pounds. In the past, my eyes have always glazed over during money talks in other history books.

One qualm was the constant references to Chaucer and “The Canterbury Tales”. Although Mortimer used a medium amount of sources for the book; Chaucer is readily quoted and referred to. If Chaucer was a brand and this book was a TV show, it would scream, “product placement”. Also, the chapter regarding laws and court systems was confusing, but admittedly, I’m not even interested in those topics in modern times so perhaps it just wasn’t my cup of tea, personally.

Overall, The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England is an absolutely terrific book: one of those works which you are sad to see end. The crux of it all is Mortimer’s passion for history. There is no escaping it and it bleeds through his work. More importantly, he views history in a different manner than the average person passing this ardor onto the reader, who will never view history or Medieval England the same again. The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England should be used as the sourcebook for every subsequent medieval-themed historical fiction book, play, TV show, commercial, etc. Where was this book over 15 years ago when I was a school child partaking in our school’s “Medieval Faire”? Perhaps, I should travel back into that time...

[Andy Marr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Genuinely fascinating. A sort of Horrible Histories for grownups.

[Kat · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was super interesting and informative if you’re looking to understand what life was like back in 14th century England. Plenty of statistics, but also the author worked hard to tell about life in an interesting narrative way that kept things from getting too dry. I found all the little tidbits about trade and buildings and the daily life of an Englishman very informative as well as statistics about percentages of the population that was literate, what sort of life you could expect if you were born into a household that worked for a landowner, etc.

[H (no longer expecting notifications) Balikov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliantly conceived and executed. Just what is needed to fill out a dry historical account of 14th Century England, but even more useful for evaluating how far historical fiction strayed from historical fact. Mortimer gives plenty of detail but it is well organized and presented in such a companionable manner that it always goes down smoothly.

Looking at this book, ten years later, I am still as enthusiastic about what Mortimer packs into it.

[Dannii Elle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have long found this period of history the most fascinating to read about. What compels my interest is not the fierce battles or matters of court, but more the running of the day-to-day life of the common people, during this time.

For that reason, it was like this book was penned with my particular desires in mind. Unlike many other non-fiction books, this was not set out in the typical chronological format. Instead, this was split into sections that focused on one particular area of interest - such as clothing, food, and housing. Battles, the Black Plague, and other areas of historic interest were noted but little space was given over to dwelling on those subjects. This is more of an overview of how an average day would look like to an average citizen.

I also adored how this book was penned, which fitted well with the structure of this book. With the minimum of dryness and a sprinkle of humour all information was relayed. It was neither sensational nor overly-academic, but instead a steady mixture of them both. As the title suggests, this book is written as if it were to be used as an actual guide for an actual future time-traveller, assisting them on how best to fit in if they were to return to an average day from this period of history. Average seems to be the word to best sum up this book's ultimate focus, but certainly not how I would describe how it delivered what many would perceive these rather banal facts.

[Tracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obviously, A Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England was a title calculated to gain my attention. The premise: a different take on presenting an overview of a period of time, using the format of a travel guide – something of a Fodor's England 1320 that might be found in the TARDIS. Exploring the experience of all the senses, this should be a gem of a resource to the writer of historical fiction or fantasy.

From the introduction:

We might eat differently, be taller, and live longer, and we might look at jousting as being unspeakably dangerous and not at all a sport, but we know what grief is, and what love, fear, pain, ambition, enmity, and hunger are. We should always remember that what we have in common with the past is just as important – real and essential to our lives as those things which make us different.

Er. Almost lost me there. "Be taller" I can let pass with a chuckle – I'd probably fit right in, heightwise, in 1320, tall only amongst hobbits (oh: actually, I'd still be short – women average 5'2") – but I strenuously object to the remarks about jousting. Dangerous? Yes, and so are auto racing and football. Not at all a sport? Pfft. Say that to Justin Lewis or Justin Ray Thompson's face, I dare you. (And before anyone can chime in, yes I'm aware that the jousting of today bears about the same resemblance to 14th century joust as today's sword fighting resembles theirs. But it's still a sport.)

"W.H. Auden once suggested that to understand your own country, you need to have lived in at least two others. One can say something similar for periods of time. To understand your own century, you need to have come to terms with at least two others." I like it. If nothing else, one wonderful thing about looking at another time period in this sort of format is as in the introduction, the oft-repeated, but necessarily so, axiom that people never change. There are some shifts in perception and tolerance – bear- and bull-baiting are no longer remotely acceptable in much of the world, and the education of children no longer relies heavily on the rod, and it's no longer considered a hilarious lark to set a trap to string someone up by the ankle … but it's taken centuries to shift such things out of the norm into the abnormal, and the behaviors or the desires toward them do still linger. One point carried through this book is that, fundamentally, a medieval man or woman is not so very different from someone you'd meet on the street right now. (Particularly if "right now" you're walking down a path at a Renaissance Faire, but that's a whole 'nother post.)

I rather enjoy how almost point for point this book contradicts A World Lit Only By Fire. As described there, the medieval period was dark ("lit only by fire") and filthy and pest-ridden, and the peasantry slogged their way through a short and grinding existence until they died of something which could probably be cured or prevented now. In which there is some truth, of course – but Ian Mortimer points out that a medieval man had no 21st-century standard by which to judge his own surroundings. If it was by our standards filthy, that only means our cleaning methods include chemicals, ready-made tools, and easily accessed fresh water; the average housewife did quite well with what she had. No one expected to live to see their nineties, and while the average day in the life might have been filled with drudgery, the sun shone just as bright as it does now, and it was also filled with laughter and song every chance there was.

Otherwise, there were surprisingly few surprises here for a reader of a great many medieval-set books; whatever can be said of some, I have always had the greatest faith that Edith Pargeter's books could be relied on as largely accurate. But it is the handful of surprises, and the much more generous concentration of detail, that make this a terrific reference. How far can someone expect to travel on medieval roads, on foot or by horse or otherwise? It's in here.

There is some excellent information here, entertainingly presented. I do wish some parts had been expanded, though. Sumptuary laws are touched on, the origins and some detail given – but I think if a time traveller had to rely purely on this book as regards to what he is and is not allowed to wear he might end up in trouble: color, for example, was dictated as well as material. A great many of the dictates were moot, as crimson velvet or any material dyed purple was too expensive for most, but on the off chance a time traveller missed this and transgressed he could be subject to fine.

Another thing that surprised me was the failure to explain small surprising things … for example, the mention of a brown scarlet item of clothing. Apparently, I find after a little research, the word (from mid 13th century French) originally meant fine fabric, of whatever color: "a kind of rich cloth". (1200–50; Middle English < Old French escarlate < Medieval Latin scarlata, scarletum, perhaps < Arabic saqirlāṭ, siqillāṭ < Medieval Greek sigillátos < Latin sigillātus decorated with patterns in relief; see sigillate). The author is very good about most such things, which makes this sort of omission strange.

I am unreasonably delighted to hear about the licenses required to build castles or fortifications. James Bond can keep his license to kill – I want a license to crenelate. Also, in the section called "Organized Crime", suddenly Robin Hood comes up … and there came a tiny little light bulb over my head. Of course Robin Hood and his men were organized crime. As with the crenelating, I am insupportably tickled by this.

On the whole, while this was a lovely idea, well-written and well-read, and very enjoyable, for me there just wasn't quite the depth of information I hoped for. This was a very nice overview, dipping down here and there for a closer look. But I still love the idea of the Fodor's Medieval England; I'd love to see that.

[Bettie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Description: Imagine you could get into a time machine and travel back to the 14th century. This text sets out to explain what life was like in the most immediate way, through taking the reader to the Middle Ages, and showing everything from the horrors of leprosy and war to the ridiculous excesses of roasted larks and haute couture.

As Susanna mentions in her review, the clothing section was very interesting: knitting was not known in 14C.
Fully recommended.

3.5* The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England
4.5* The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England

[Jo (The Book Geek) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a wonderful insight into medieval England. I've always been fascinated with medieval history, and this book was a grand companion. The book tells us about the economy, the classes of people, and the work that was available. It is split into chapters, full to the brim of interesting and somewhat juicy information.

I particularly liked the part on disease, health and medicine, as morbid as that may seem. It just fascinates me how illnesses were dealt with back them, especially, The Plague.

Things felt a little tedious when he began talking about the landscape, which didn't interest me as much as everything else, but still, this was a very enjoyable history book.

[Stella · Rating 2 out of 5]

I DID IT, I freaking finished this book. I think I deserve some applause.

I love history, even the dry facts, a lot of the time. While the writing style in this book was actually quite nice, the content could be a drag. I found it harder to go through than a schoolbook.

I've had this book on my currently-reading shelf for 9 months or so. It was a chore. The author was nitpicking uninteresting details and forgetting whole aspects that I think matter, are interesting and would make this book a lot more lively. He explains things that are pretty insignificant and uninteresting or obvious but throws around other words without an explanation when it really needs explaining.

Apparently, you have to be a male to time travel to medieval England, who knew?! First of all, why does the author assume I'm a man? But second, and most of all, where are the women in this book? Don't tell me they didn't play a role in this society, because they did. Ugh, I only realised halfway through that this was what was bothering me the most, but by then I felt I had worked too hard to dnf this.

This book just didn't sit well with me, even though I tried so hard to like it, I really wanted to like it... There were some wonderful moments where I really felt like I was in the time and place he was describing, but they do not compare to the times I forced myself to continue reading this book.

[Matt (Fully supports developing sentient AGI) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another interesting addition to the genre of "Could I live in medieval England and not immediately die or get burned at the stake?" to include The Doomsday Book, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age, and the Gies' Life in a Medieval City, Life in a Medieval Castle, Life in a Medieval Village. So far, not looking good. I like AC and don't like parasites.

[Gabrielle (Reading Rampage) · Rating 5 out of 5]

4 and a half stars, rounded up.

Only the best non-fiction can be informative and highly entertaining at the same time, and Ian Mortimer walks that line with great skill in “The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England”! I really love his approach, to look at lived history rather than simply at lists of dates, names of kings or important battles. Those things are certainly important, but without a better understanding of the day to day reality in which humans, who were not that different from us, might have lived, they are rather dry and easy to forget. Mortimer wants his readers to get a much more concrete sense of what life was like in 14th century England by discussing

Mortimer is careful to debunk a lot of myths about the Middle Ages, especially with regards to literacy and sexuality, but make no mistake: this was still a rather gross period of time to be alive (by our standards, anyway), even when you were lucky enough to stay clean! I enjoy Medieval historical fiction (Maurice Druon’s “The Accursed Kings” series is an old favorite, and so is “Pillars of the World”), so I find the subject fascinating, and knowing more details about what life was like at the time some of my favorite stories are set certainly helps me appreciate them more and appreciate the struggles of characters I love to read about on a different level.

Mortimer explores many aspects of medieval life that is often not looked at in great detail in fiction, from clothes, to food, to legislation and hobbies. I knew a few things, but I was pleasantly surprised to learn more, especially on the concept of communal justice, which I had not heard about before.

If I have one complain about this book is that I would have wanted it to be even longer and more detailed! Luckily for me, he wrote many more, that I intend to get my hands on quickly!

[Brad · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fantastic way to consume an overview of an historical period. Ian Mortimer's decision to create a guide for tourism shifts the focus of history from the "Great People of History" to the "People You'll Meet while Walking by Shitbrook," and that turns out to be far more fascinating -- at least to me.

Want to know how to avoid prosecution for murder in case you slip up during your travels? Mortimer lets you know. Want to know what sports you can expect to enjoy? They're all here. Want to know what drinks to avoid, what to look for in foods, what roads to take, what protection you'll need while travelling, what to wear, what to read, what to carry with you? Look no further than this fantastic guide.

I'll be leaving for London 1362 tomorrow, just after one of the outbursts of plague has cleared up. That way I can take advantage of the decreased and depressed population, and hopefully avoid the buboes.

See you when I get back.

[Tristram Shandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Travelling Broadens the Mind as Well as the Soles

The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England is the first of a series of Time Traveller’s Guides written by Ian Mortimer covering, up to now, the Middle Ages, the times of the Tudors as well as Restoration England. Reading the first part of these peculiar travelogues made me hope that Mortimer will continue his Traveller’s Guide series at least into Victorian England because even though I would certainly not have wanted to live back then, this is the epoch that fascinates me most and consequently, I would never say no to a time travel with that alluring destination in mind.

Like Ruth Goodman or Judith Flanders, Ian Mortimer’s focus lies on people’s everyday lives in the past, which means that we will learn a lot about medieval clothes, medieval food and drink, medieval housing, medieval leisure time activities, about health, hygiene and sickness, the workings of the law, and similar topics, instead of getting an account of political and social developments. Every now and then, mention will be made of a monarch or some other politically influential person, or there will be reference to events like the Peasants’ Revolt or the Great Western Schism, but on the whole, we will see ordinary people – from all orders of society – go about their day-to-day business. Considering that the term “Middle Ages” refers to a long span of time and that it was anything but static, Mortimer concentrates on the 14th century, which, according to him, ”comes closest to the popular conception of what is ‘medieval’, with its chivalry, jousts, etiquette, art and architecture.” (p.3)

Mortimer takes us on a very impressive tour through various aspects of medieval life – by the way, the table of contents, which labels these different aspects, will be almost the same for the ensuing Time Traveller’s Guides – and he offers us a lot to learn. Quite a lot of the details – and those who like historical detail will feel very much at home with Mortimer – he gives may seem curious to the modern reader, e.g. that there were a lot of blind horses in medieval England since stealing horses was an endemic evil and depriving a steed of its eyesight prevented it from finding its way home to its proper owner. Or that a publican would be held responsible for any disturbance his inebriated patrons would cause on their way home. Or that the Church forbade people to eat meat on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays as well as during Lent and Advent, with monks also being prohibited the consumption of meat from any quadruped as such in their refectories, and that the monks went to great lengths of Jesuitry in order to circumvent the spirit of this law while adhering to its letter. Or that medieval doctors would base their diagnosis not on such a vulgar procedure as actually looking at their patients but rather on looking at, smelling and tasting their urine and going through some astrological calculations. These are only some of the peculiarities Mortimer mentions but all in all, he does not use them in order to present us the Middle Ages as a freakshow and leave us with the idea of our own superiority in so many ways. Quite on the contrary, his tour through the habits and customs and daily life of medieval Europe will successfully work out the common ground between people back then and ourselves, a common ground which lies in both them and us being human, and it is this basic quality that for him takes precedence over the wise-cracking of more academic historians. Just look at what conclusion he draws from the changes brought about by the plague in England:

”Imagine a disease were to wipe out forty per cent of the modern population of the UK – more than twenty-five million people. Now imagine a historian in the future discussing the benefits of your death and the deaths of your partner, your children and your friends … You would want to cry out, or hang your head in despair, that historians would blithely comment on the benefits of such suffering. There is no shadow of a doubt that every one of these people you see in 1348 – whether they will die or survive – deserves your compassion. When you see women dragging their parents’ and children’s corpses into ditches, weeping and screaming – when you listen to a man who has buried all five of his sons with his own hands, and, in his distress, he tells you that there was no divine service when he did so, and that the death bell did not sound – you know that these people have entered a chasm of grief beyond description.” (p.203)

In other words, Mortimer succeeds in maintaining a kind of tension between the familiar and the, for us, novel and unusual, and the upshot of it is that rather than travelling through time as a pursed-lipped colonizer might travel a land whose denizens he considers lagging behind the standards of civilization, we will more often than not look at those people from many centuries ago as our fellowmen, in suffering as well as in joy (although they probably had more of the former), in love as well as in hate. As Mortimer himself puts it:

”Cast your mind back to the different standards of hygiene and justice in the fourteenth century. If we look at these aspects of life and judge them as dirty and cruel, we are really only describing our own perceptions as viewed from the modern world. There is nothing wrong in doing this, it just is very present-centred. It says more about us now than it does about us in the fourteenth century (or any other age for that matter; the past is all dirty and cruel in the modern popular imagination, with the exception of the Romans, who are just cruel). However, if we start to consider medieval people as alive […] we can begin to see these people in relation to their contemporaries. Of course they are not all filthy. Many are proud of the clean state of their houses – like their modern counterparts – regardless of the judgements of people in six hundred years’ time. We may consider them excessively cruel for beating their children and dogs, but this is judging them by our standards, not their own. As we have seen, fourteenth-century parents who do not beat their children are thought to be acting irresponsibly.” (p.290f.)

Talking of present-centred approaches to a book like this, there are people who criticize Mortimer for not having paid sufficient attention to women both as subjects of his look into the past and as time travellers who accompany him on his journey. I cannot say that I see much sense in such criticism: The author remarks that in those days it was unusual and, of course, extremely dangerous for women to travel the country on their own, and from this to draw the conclusion that the book is directed at men primarily because it feels as though the author had a male time traveller in his mind when he invites his reader, for example, to follow him into the house of a town merchant and look about him, is unfair and bespeaks a mind that is bent on taking offence because the sex of the time traveller does not play any role at all the way Mortimer conducts us on his tours of virtual history.

Then what about the criticism of the author’s paying mere token acknowledgement to women’s lives at that time? For example, our time travel has us visit a monastery but for some reason we are not granted entry to a nunnery as well. Honestly, one probably has to face it that women in those days were simply not seen as much in public life as in later epochs, and that their sphere was often confined to their own homes, more or less. This, however, is something that Mortimer mirrors aptly in his book where he talks about women’s daily chores as well as about women’s fashion and the rules that applied when dealing with them socially. The only topic with regard to which I felt that the author could have told me something more about women’s roles was when he talked about doctors and surgeons. Here I thought that the role of women in healing and midwifery, for instance, was grossly neglected, but still this detail does not make the whole book oblivious of medieval women.

All in all, and I think my glowing descriptions might have led you to anticipate this, I can whole-heartedly recommend this book to anyone interested in everyday medieval history.

[Sud666 · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent history book. It really shines light on the lifestyles and times of the 14th Century. Borken down into 11 sections, they are as follows:
The Landscape
The People
The Medieval Character
Basic Essentials
What to Wear
Travelling
Where to Stay
What to eat and drink
Health and Hygiene
The Law
What to do

From descriptions of what cities and towns were like, to the various societal divisions, common practices, food, etc

It is superbly researched, entertainingly written and full of information and cool tidbits for any history fan. It will help to dispel some of the common myths about the 14th century life. If you would like a great overview of life in this time, you can not go wrong with this book. It does a great job of setting down the way life was during this time and it will give a reader that is unfamiliar with this time a great insight into this period.

Highly recommended for any history fan, or just anyone looking to learn about what life and people were like during the 14th Century.

[Ron Sami · Rating 5 out of 5]

A detailed and meticulous book that tells about England in the fourteenth century.

Plot. Rating 5
The plot is clear and voluminous. In non-fiction literature, the plot is usually built around the coverage of a topic, and in this book, the author describes in a logical and consistent way about all aspects of life in medieval England.
The book shows well how citizens of the medieval society lived - it creates a great effect of presence. Cities, villages, buildings, bridges, churches, roads, laws, customs, courts, trade, feudal lords, servants, artisans, merchants... - many aspects of life are presented in the book. Frankly, after ten minutes of thinking, I did not find a topic that was not represented in the book.
The book also included interesting separate plots, for example, the story of a cruel gang or a retelling of the literary works of this era.

Characters. Rating 5
The characters are episodic due to the chosen format. However, the text clearly shows people from all walks of life, as well as historical figures. For many characters, a few brief facts quickly delineate their personalities. For example, after reading the book, the path of King Edward II to his own collapse became clearer.

Dialogues. Rating 4
Usually non-fiction does not spoil its readers with long dialogues, so they have to be sought out with a magnifying glass in hand. Luckily, I discovered a few dialogues while reading, although they are quite rare. However, the quality of the dialogues is very decent and varied. For example, dialogues from a phrase book and art books convey the medieval atmosphere well.

Writing style. Rating 5
The chapters are well structured, and the clear and complete style of writing in these chapters facilitates the understanding and clarification of many facts.

Worldbuilding. Rating 5
Approximately ninety different themes from medieval life are shown in the book, so there is no point in listing them. Some are described in more detail, some less detailed, but even for the latter the level of detail remains high. Sometimes there are comparisons with the present state of a topic, which provides a good contrast, and also brings a little humor.
I liked the vast majority of the topics covered, such as the excellent story about criminals, the hierarchy of law enforcement and the structure of the judiciary.

Conclusion. Overall rating 5
All in all, this is an excellent encyclopedia of fourteenth-century England.

[Diz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book takes readers back in time to see life in England in the 1300s. It's fascinating to see how different society and culture were in those days.

[Karen Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Historian Ian Mortimer does something really interesting with this book: he sets out to recreate the period (the Fourteenth Century) as if he were writing a travel book for tourists as opposed to researching and explaining a forgotten time. In other words, he places the reader in the moment, advising you where to go, what to see, how to behave, speak, dress and what to expect should you happen to have the good fortune to be transported back to not-so-merry old England in the 1300s.
After my second reading of this book in less than a year, I wish I had access to Dr Who’s Tardis because, with Mortimer’s well-thumbed book under my arm, I would head straight for Exeter, where the book opens, prepared for the ordure of the aptly named, Shitbrook, the breath-taking sight of the cathedral, avert my eyes from the remains of criminals clinging to the gallows, and be careful not to stare at the bright and strange clothes the people are wearing, while tripping along the cobbles, one hand firmly on my money so a cut-purse does not take it.
Like many contemporary historians, Mortimer believes in social history, reconstructing the past in order to understand how it was lived and not simply by kings, queens, monks, lawyers and nobles, those who have left records of their deeds and desires for us to absorb and through which we judge them. Instead, Mortimer turns to all classes and all experiences and takes the reader on a magnificent and fascinating journey back to a character-filled society with its own delights and dangers. It was so good the first time, I did it again and liked it even better.
Explaining where to stay, how to tell the time, greet people (Eg. “fellow or friend, ye be welcome”), about the sumptuary laws, what certain coins look like and what you might be able to buy and where, what diseases we might succumb to if we’re not careful, what we might be served and how to eat it whether it be in an inn, a peasant’s house or a king’s castle (all of which are thoroughly described as if you’re on a guided tour), Mortimer runs the gamut of class and place in this vivid recreation that is at once hugely informative and always vastly entertaining.
Even how to avoid running foul of the law and what punishment might be meted out is made clear as well as the significance of religious observances. Medieval humour is also explored as well as, for those so inclined, where you might find the best er hum, sexual services (Southwark, the Stews, in London, in case you wanted to know). He also discusses how to entertain ourselves while we’re there (the Stews aside) and who, among the great figures known to us now, we might expect to encounter on our journey – Geoffrey Chaucer anyone? He has rooms above Aldgate.
Just when you think you’ve stepped back into the present, Mortimer will remind you to take a deep breath and stop. Listen, he advises. What do we hear? Very little. Maybe some bells, the sounds of birds and animals and, above all, the chatter and clutter of people should we be near a town or city. Or, if present at a joust, the thunder of hooves. The medieval world is a very quiet place, something I hadn’t considered, along with many of the other preconceptions and yes, prejudices I had about this period and which Mortimer’s grandest of tours manages to overturn.
If you’re looking for a book that will literally transport you to another time and place, than I cannot recommend this one highly enough. A fabulous read.

[Nigeyb · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exciting and compelling way to engage with the past

The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century is a wonderful concept. History told in the form of a living guide - up close and personal. It's brilliant. Ian Mortimer shows us the food, the customs, the language, the clothes, the games, the laws, the risks, the illnesses, medicine, the poor, the aristocrats, the merchants, the soldiers, writers, poets, religion, the criminals, and so on. He also brings alive the sights, the smells, the landscape, cities, towns, markets and hamlets. Every few pages there are insightful facts and lightbulb moments that connect the 14th century to our lives in the early 21st century.

The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century really brings the era to life. Take, for example, his section on the Black Death. You may already know that it wiped out a third of Europe's population (dwarfing the First World War) but until you walk through devastated communities watching rats and wild pigs eating corpses or see a man sobbing as he tells you he has buried five sons, I don't think you've probably fully got to grips with the implications of such extraordinary loss of life.

The entire book is consistently vivid and instructive. Ian Mortimer uses the second person and the present tense throughout. So, you travel into the city or you sit down at a table, making it an effective technique for fully engaging the reader. This approach may not be for everyone but I found it compelling and involving.

I notice Ian Mortimer has taken the same approach in two other books - The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England and The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain: Life in the Age of Samuel Pepys, Isaac Newton and The Great Fire of London. I intend to read them too.

5/5

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like the “Baedeker’s guide to the past” conceit, and appreciate how lightly used it is here. Mortimer always seems to know exactly when to leave it aside and let the book be just a description of medieval life in the present tense rather than a guide for the modern visitor. But when he does lean on the conceit it tends to work, even when it’s focused on disabusing would-be travellers of their idealistic fantasies about their destination (not normally the business of most Lonely Planet guides to Paris or Barcelona, which are generally happy to sustain rather than dispel such myths).

Many of the details here would cure you of any desire you might have had to visit the era if you were thinking of going; after all, as most people know well, the actual medieval world was so much more violent, cruel, filthy and terrifying than fairy tales and quaint Tolkien’s-Shire reveries suggest. Mortimer knows his stuff and presents and organizes it well here, conveying a remarkably vivid sense of the time and place. In fact the book works best when it’s at its most sensual, surveying the gruesome details of medieval medicine or describing the meals in lords’ homes and on the tables of alehouses rather than, say, clarifying whether a trial of unlawful distraint goes to the Court of the King’s Bench or the Court of Common Pleas, etc. But Mortimer’s witty voice sparkles throughout, and while the Guide gets exhaustingly mired in minutiae at times (I didn’t want or even ultimately read the tables listing things like the monetary value of household goods or the daily wages of hired labourers), the book is never dull for more than a few pages before it’s on to something genuinely fascinating, surprising and/or horrifying and comes surging back to life once more.

[MAP · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really fun and great idea. Basically the point is that since you're traveling back to the medieval ages, you need to know all the things that you won't get in a normal history book, like what underwear you wear or how you get from London to Canterbury in an age that doesn't have trustworthy maps or roads with signs. Although a couple of chapters dragged, a surprising amount of the ones I thought would be boring (Law, for example) ended up being really interesting. I would love if the publisher made this a series: The Time Traveler's Guide to Renaissance Italy, Napoleonic France, Ancient Persia, etc, each written by a different expert in that era. I would devour them.

[Jemidar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really 4.5 stars.

Because this book is such a tantalizing glimpse into the real lives of people in 14th century England it has inspired me to do something that my university lecturers couldn't, and that is to actually read The Canterbury Tales. It's now officially my special project for next year. Thank you Dr Mortimer :-).

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting way to write a history book. This author wrote this book like it was a travel guide. He tries to describe the sights, smells, and people of the era as if you could walk down the road and be in the middle of it. I really enjoyed reading it, and suggest it to anyone who enjoys reading history. I hope he writes more like it.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

2016 is the year I have decided to learn more about history, well that's the plan anyway! So, starting with this one I think was a good choice. It reads almost like a novel. The idea that you are a visitor to medieval England, discovering what life was like there from your own observations draws the reader/listener into that world immediately.

I found it endlessly fascinating, discovering new things. The author imparts his knowledge on the subject with such a light touch that it is never dull, always entertaining, and sometimes amusing (medieval fashions were bonkers - would you want to wear a pair of shoes that made it impossible to walk upstairs in?).

I liked that each subject was allocated its own short chapter, so that you could move on quickly if it really didn't interest you. There are many subjects included, ranging from fashion, food, health and illness, hygiene, hunting, travel, jobs, war, religion, royalty, crime and punishment (often arbitrary, swift and brutal) and much more.

I wouldn't want to live in medieval England - the chances of dying of something now preventable or curable was immense. Life expectancy was not good, that is even if you managed to avoid getting the plague which was rife.

A thoroughly enjoyable read, and a good informative book for anyone wanting to discover more about every day life in that era.

[Tria · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you're a white male wanting to know what life might have been like for you if you travelled back in time to the 14th century, this book is probably great and you're likely to enjoy it as it immerses you in a life you might have lived. Even if you're a man of another skin colour, you still might.

If you're a woman, or a non-binary person (or, even, a rape survivor of any gender)? Not so much. Mortimer has a very formal, very narrow focus in this book, which means he looks at the world mostly from the point of view of the biggest and best-known - in modern times, that is - historical sources of the era. He doesn't really look into much material that was popular in its time but less known now, from what I could gather. As is typical with the "best-known" historical sources - at least in terms of diarists and the like - prior to the late Victorian/early Edwardian era of the late 19th and early 20th century, most are from the viewpoint of a man, or at least published under the name of one. Admittedly, women's works were not published widely under female names before the late 17th century, with rare exceptions mostly being limited to religieuses. There are, however, many female authors of the period whose work he might have tapped but did not.

This does not excuse Mortimer's lack of resourcefulness and/or content in finding or including details about life as a woman in the 14th century to accompany the overwhelming mass of data, anecdata and detail that he includes about life as a man in that era. The book is far too heavily weighted in gender terms, and that makes it substantially less interesting to me. I have heard this is a flaw with his historical time-travel series' in general, and have witnessed it personally in his Elizabethan-era instalment. Where women's lives are mentioned, it is almost always in terms of their relationships to men or how they were treated or named by men of the time (and ways men of today should behave or are expected to behave when interacting with 14th century women!). Famed royal warrior women, influential abbesses, other women in powerful roles... so far as Mortimer is concerned they may as well never have existed at all.

The narration is the best thing about this book; though it's a little more formal than I should have expected for the approach taken by the author, it's still done very well indeed, and is quite appropriate to the material herein. I would rate the narration four stars, but the book itself only two. That being the case, and given the peculiarities of GR's rating system, I've rated this edition 2.5 rounded down to 2* (where my Audible review is rounded up to 3*). I am so disappointed in the book (and the author especially) that I plan to return it if I am permitted to do so.

I will be up-front about the fact that I did not finish reading this book. It irritated me too much; when I feel inclined to throw whatever I'm using to read at the nearest wall on more than one occasion, I believe that's a good time to say "no more" and give it up. Besides which, I listened to this using the Audible app on my Android phone (as I usually do for audiobooks), and my poor phone already has a cracked screen in two places; she doesn't need to be damaged further!

[Brian Clegg · Rating 4 out of 5]

History is one of those subjects that ought to be fascinating, but all too often is dry and dull. Ian Mortimer had the excellent idea of doing a series of 'time traveller's guide's - telling you what you will experience on a visit to medieval England (here considering roughly 1300-1400).

As you might expect, there's a fair amount of dispelling of clichés about the period, while at the same time showing that others have a reasonable basis. It really was dirty, smelly and often nasty for many, yet there was also, for example, a surprisingly high level of literacy in the middle and upper classes. The class divisions are stark and multifold, both interesting as (as we will see) producing the biggest problem for Mortimer in making this book approachable.

I was particularly shocked by the statistic that the population of England halved in the period, primarily down to a series of waves of plague. And this was in a population that seems tiny now. Mortimer lists the estimated population in 1377 of the biggest towns and cities by size. London tops the list with 40,000. By the time we're down to number 10 on the list (Boston, in Lincolnshire), it's 4,800. Cambridge, for example, struggles in at number 21 with 3,200 people - a population that we would see in a reasonable-sized village today.

Traditionally, history has been accused of focusing too much on royalty and nobles. That's all in here, but there's plenty all the way down to the lowest villein, with lots of enjoyable little details (like women not using side saddles, as we might imagine). The detail is both the book's delight and its failing. We like to get intimate little details, but Mortimer feels it necessary for each of the areas he looks at (from what to wear through to eating and drinking) to detail what what would apply for each of the levels of the hierarchy - something that after a while gets occasionally tedious. I think it might have been better had he followed a real guide book more in being prepared to just focus in on some areas (perhaps varying from topic to topic), rather than trying to be comprehensive. (My favourite old guidebook, England on 10 Dollars a Day, for example is decidedly selective on where it covers.)

What is certainly true is that this book would be a boon for anyone writing historical fiction set in the fourteenth century or thereabouts. It is wonderfully rich in detail. I did enjoy it and do recommend it - but sometimes, reading it felt just a bit too much like doing my homework.

[Penny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this and have bored everyone around me with 'Did you know.....'.
Ian Mortimer brings the period alive with wonderful descriptions of what you would have seen, heard, sang, said, eaten, smelt etc in Medieval England.
Strange to think of a place with no potatoes, carrots or tomatoes. All the squirrels would be red. Hardly any pine trees or any sort of evergreen. No horse chestnut trees. No public spaces in towns apart from the market place.
And the loudest noise most people would ever hear would be thunder.
It's not a period I would wish to travel back to unless I was male, rich and healthy.
Obviously in a book this long and far ranging there were parts I found more interesting than others. But overall it was great and I look forward to reading his Guide to Elizabethan England.