This is a brilliant biography of Joan of Arc, telling the story in a new and fresh way

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Surrounded by myth, the story of the life of edward II is stripped to the bare bones in a new book.

Edward II: The Unconventional King
by Kathryn Warner and with a foreword by Ian Mortimer
Amberley Publishing 2014
ISBN-10: 1445641208
ISBN-13: 978-1445641201

ABSTRACT:

He is one of the most reviled English kings in history. He drove his kingdom to the brink of civil war a dozen times in less than twenty years. He allowed his male lovers to rule the kingdom. He led a great army to the most ignominious military defeat in English history. His wife took a lover and invaded his kingdom, and he ended his reign wandering around Wales with a handful of followers, pursued by an army. He was the first king of England forced to abdicate his throne. Popular legend has it that he died screaming impaled on a red-hot poker, but in fact the time and place of his death are shrouded in mystery. His life reads like an Elizabethan tragedy, full of passionate doomed love, bloody revenge, jealousy, hatred, vindictiveness and obsession. He was Edward II, and this book tells his story. The focus here is on his relationships with his male ‘favourites’ and his disaffected wife, on his unorthodox lifestyle and hobbies, and on the mystery surrounding his death. Using almost exclusively fourteenth-century sources and Edward s own letters and speeches wherever possible, Kathryn Warner strips away the myths which have been created about him over the centuries, and provides a far more accurate and vivid picture of him than has previously been seen.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Kathryn Warner holds a BA and an MA with Distinction in medieval history and literature from the University of Manchester. She has had an article about the earl of Kent’s plot of 1330 published in the English Historical Review in 2011, and also one about a fifteenth-century manuscript published in the Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester. When she is not immersed in the fourteenth century, she works as a teacher and translator.

 

By the mid-twelfth century the lands on the Eastern Coast of the Baltic Sea, from Finland to the frontiers of Poland, were Catholic Europe’s final frontier

The North-Eastern Frontiers of Medieval Europe. The Expansion of Latin Christendom in the Baltic Lands
Edited by Alan V. Murray, University of Leeds, UKSeries : The Expansion of Latin Europe, 1000-1500
Ashgate Variorum 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4094-3680-5
ISBN Short: 9781409436805

ABSTRACT:

By the mid-twelfth century the lands on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea, from Finland to the frontiers of Poland, were Catholic Europe’s final frontier: a vast, undeveloped expanse of lowlands, forest and waters, inhabited by peoples belonging to the Finnic and Baltic language groups. In the course of the following three centuries, Finland, Estonia, Livonia and Prussia were incorporated into the Latin world through processes of conquest, Christianisation and settlement, and brought under the rule of Western monarchies and ecclesiastical institutions. Lithuania was left as the last pagan polity in Europe, yet able to accept Christianity on its own terms in 1386. The Western conquest of the Baltic lands advanced the frontier of Latin Christendom to that of the Russian Orthodox world, and had profound and long lasting effects on the institutions, society and culture of the region lasting into modern times. This volume presents 21 key studies (2 of them translated from German for the first time) on this crucial period in the development of North-Eastern Europe, dealing with crusade and conversion, the establishment of Western rule, settlement and society, and the development of towns, trade and the economy. It includes a classified bibliography of the main works published in Western languages since World War II together with an introduction by the editor.

CONTENTS:

• Introduction.
• Part One Historiographical Approaches:
  Crusades and colonisation in the Baltic: a historiographic analysis, Sven Ekdahl
  Approaches to the conversion of the Finns: ideologies, symbols, and archaeological features, Derek Fewster;
• Part Two Crusade, Conquest and Conversion:
  Sweden’s conquest of Finland: a clash of cultures?, Philip Line
  From Fulco to Theoderic: the changing face of the Livonian mission, Peep Peter Rebane
  The military activity of the Order of the Sword Brothers (1202-1236), Ēvalds Mugurēvičs
  Military orders and the beginning of crusades in Prussia, Maria Starnawska
  Prussian mission and the invitation of the Teutonic Order into Kulmerland, László Pósán
  The arrival of Christianity in Lithuania: baptism and survival (1341-1387), Michal Giedroyć.
• Part Three State Formation:
  Acquisition of the acquired: the establishing of a real administration in Livonia, Muntis Auns; The military occupation of Semgallia in the 13th century, William Urban
  Estonia under Danish rule, Niels Skyum-Nielsen
  The Teutonic Order in Prussia, Karol Górski.
• Part Four Population and Society:
  Finns as aliens and compatriots in the late medieval kingdom of Sweden, Marko Lamberg
  Genesis of the Livonian town in the 13th century, Enn Tarvel; Interactions between indigenous and Western culture in Livonia in the 13th to 16th centuries, Ēvalds Mugurēvičs
  Languages in a medieval North European city: an example from medieval Tallinn, Tiina Kala
  The Teutonic Order and the non-German population of Prussia, Reinhard Wenskus
• Part Five Economy: The profits of the Cross: merchant involvement in the Baltic crusade (c. 1180-1230), Mark R. Munzinger
  The Hanseatic League and the Eastern Baltic: towns, trade and politics in medieval Livonia from the 13th to the mid-16th century, Andris Šnē
• Index.

ABOUT THE EDITOR:

Dr Alan V. Murray is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Studies and Editorial Director, International Medieval Bibliography, University of Leeds, UK.

Theophilos, 829 -842, was the last emperor of Byzantium adhering to iconoclasm. New book reinterprets major xplores the role of his Oriental politics.

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Professor Michael H. Gelting is both renowned for his wide-ranging achievements as a medieval historian as well as kindness towards students. A recent collection of studies celebrate his inspirational work.

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