On 15 June 1215, rebel barons forced King John to meet them at Runnymede. They did not trust the King, so he was not allowed to leave until his seal was attached to the charter in front of him. This work explores what it was like to be alive in that momentous year. It interweaves political power struggles with other issues.

In The Canterbury Tales , Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce. This version of the text has been translated into modern English by Nevill Coghill.

The second son of a minor Essex landowner, John Hawkwood chose to head south in 1360 after serving as a captain in the Black Prince's wars against France. He and other freebooters besieged the Pope at Avignon, and when they were paid to go to Italy, discovered that the threat of force could be very profitable indeed. The Italian city states - Florence, Milan, Siena and Pisa - offered the richest .

A dazzling Dickensian thriller set in the underworld in the company of a grown-up 'Tiny' Timothy Cratchit !

Arguably the greatest biomedical disaster in history, the Black Death of the 14th century wiped out 40 per cent of Europe's population, rocking the foundations of medieval civilisation. The author penetrates a haze of myths to offer the reader a social history, not just of collapse but of rebirth.

The Elizabethans took from the Middle Ages the modified view of the universe which, Platonic and biblical in origin, radically differed from our own. This work elucidates such fairly familiar - though often mystifying - concepts as the four elements, the celestial harmony of 'nine enfolded Sphears', or macrocosm and microcosm.