Everyday Life in Medieval England captures the day-to-day experience of people in the middle ages -- the houses and settlements in which they lived, the food they ate, their getting and spending -- and their social relationships. The picture that emerges is of great variety, of constant change, of movement and of enterprise. Many people were downtrodden and miserably poor, but they struggled against their circumstances, resisiting oppressive authorities, to build their own way of life and to improve their material conditions. The ordinary men and women of the middle ages appear throughout. Everyday Life in Medieval England is an outstanding contribution to both national and local history.
The Arthurian Age; the Celtic Twilight; the Dark Ages; the Birth of England; these are the powerfully romantic names often given to one of the most confused yet vital periods in British history. It is an era upon which rival Celtic and English nationalisms frequently fought. It was also a period of settlement, and of the sword. This absorbing volume by David Nicolle transports us to an England shrouded in mystery and beset by savage conflict, a land which played host to one of the most enduring figures of our history – Arthur.
England and Scotland in the Fourteenth Century - New perspectives
Typical accounts of Anglo-Scottish relations over the whole fourteenth century tends to present a sustained period of bitter enmity, described routinely by stock-phrases such as 'endemic warfare', and typified by battles such as Bannockburn (1314), Neville's cross (1346) or Otterburn (1388), border-raiding and the capture of James I of Scotland by English pirates in 1406. However, as this collection shows, the situation was far more complex.
The number of native Britons, and their role, in Anglo-Saxon England has been hotly debated for generations; the English were seen as Germanic in the nineteenth century, but the twentieth saw a reinvention of the German `past'. Today, the scholarly community is as deeply divided as ever on the issue: place-name specialists have consistently preferred minimalist interpretations, privileging migration from Germany, while other disciplinary groups have been less united in their views, with many archaeologists and historians viewing the British presence, potentially at least, as numerically significant or even dominant.
The Citizen's Body - Desire, Health and the Social in Victorian England
As the idea of citizenship became more inclusive in the nineteenth century, England confronted the problem of those who seemed less fit for the responsibilities of political power. In a liberal society, fit behaviors had to originate in individual choices, rather than in coercion. Thus, social outreach became a matter not simply of giving information, but of educating and managing desire, which in turn required an active role in the very formation of subjectivity. Preparation for citizenship came to be seen as shaping the familial, moral, and physical environments required to foster a natural and healthy body and mind.
