A study of daily life in fifteenth century England.

Examination of the role played by key figures around the monarchy in the Wars of the Roses.

An incisive study of the Yorkists, including the well-known figures of Richard III, Edward III, IV and V, that places them in both an historical and literary context.

"Brilliant, a definite page turner. They combine real historical events with fascinating fictional characters. The twenty-three volumes of the Morland Dynasty series has been completely repackaged in the most elegant style, using contemporaneous artwork for each period. This wonderful series opens with the back drop of the Wars of the Roses with the marriage between Eleanor Morland and a scion of the influential house of Beaufort. It is a union which establishes the powerful Morland dynasty and in the succeeding volumes of this rich tapestry of English life, we follow their fortunes through war and peace, political upheaval and social revolution, times of pestilence and periods of plenty, and through the vicissitudes which afflict every family - love and passion, envy and betrayal, birth and death, great fortune and miserable penury... The Morland Dynasty is entertainment of the most addictive kind.

The greatest cultural mystery in the Western World is, "Who wrote the plays and sonnets published under the pen name of William Shakespeare?" For reasons of monarchial succession, greed and power, Robert Cecil, Queen Elizabeth's chief counselor, forced Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, to use a pseudonym for his great works. De Vere chose the pen name William Shakespeare. Because of his similar name, Cecil selected Will Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon as the fraudulent front man. Poor choice: Shakspere was uneducated, never owned a book, never traveled abroad, knew no foreign languages and could not read or write. Because of the tenacious grip of Conventional Wisdom, professors of English still believe Cecil's hoax 400 years later, clinging futilely to their Stratford Man despite abundant evidence against their illogical theory. Soul of the Age contains 28 high-quality articles by a remarkable new generation of authorship experts who clearly establish de Vere as Shakespeare and annihilate the illiterate Will Shakspere's candidacy. Hugh Trevor-Roper, Professor of History, Oxford University, 1962: "Armies of scholars, formidably equipped, have examined all the documents which could possibly contain at least a mention of his (Shakespeare's) name. One hundredth part of this labour applied to one of his insignificant contemporaries would be sufficient to produce a substantial biography. And yet the greatest of all Englishmen, after this tremendous inquisition, still remains so close a mystery that even his identity can still be doubted . . . "During his lifetime nobody claimed to know him. Not a single tribute was paid to him at his death. As far as the records go, he was uneducated, had no literary friends, possessed at his death no books, and could not write. It is true, six of his signatures have been found, all spelt differently; but they are so ill-formed that some graphologists suppose the hand to have been guided. Except for these signatures, no syllable of writing by Shakespeare [Shakspere] has been identified . . . Such is the best the historians can do. Clearly it is not enough. It may be the shell: it is not the man."

The literature of chivalry and of courtly love has left an indelible impression on western ideas. What is less clear is how far the contemporary warrior aristocracy took this literature to heart and how far its ideals had influence in practice, especially in war. These are questions that Maurice Keen is uniquely qualified to answer. This book is a collection of Maurice Keen's articles and deals with both the ideas of chivalry and the reality of warfare. He discusses brotherhood-in-arms, courtly love, crusades, heraldry, knighthood, the law of arms, tournaments and the nature of nobility, as well as describing the actual brutality of medieval warfare and the lure of plunder. While the standards set by chivalric codes undoubtedly had a real, if intangible, influence on the behaviour of contemporaries, chivalry's idealisation of the knight errant also enhanced the attraction of war, endorsing its horrors with a veneer of acceptability.

In the Middle Ages, rolls were ubiquitous as a writing support. While scholars have long examined the texts and images on rolls, they have rarely taken the manuscripts themselves into account. This volume readdresses this imbalance by focusing on the materiality and various usages of rolls in late medieval England and France. Researchers from England, France, Germany and Singapore demonstrate in 11 contributions how this approach can increase our understanding of the rolls and their contents, as well as the contexts in which they were produced and used.

On a stormy night in 1286, a man fell off his horse and broke his neck, setting two kingdoms on a 300-year course of war. Edward I seized the opportunity to pursue English claims to overlordship of Scotland; William Wallace and Robert Bruce headed the 'patriotic' resistance. Their collision shaped the history, politics and nationhood of the two realms, and dragged in a third with the formation of the Franco-Scottish Auld Alliance. It also created a unique society on both sides of the Anglo-Scottish border. What prevented peace from breaking out? And how, at the dawn of the seventeenth century, could a Scottish king succeed, peacefully and unopposed, to the Auld Enemy's throne? Andy King and Claire Etty trace the fractious relationship between England and Scotland from the death of Alexander III to the accession of James VI as James I of England. Spanning medieval and early modern history, this book is the ideal starting point for students studying Anglo-Scottish relations up to the Union.

On an August morning more that five hundred years ago, to the sound of thundering hooves, gunshot, the clash of steel and the cries of men in battle, Richard III, King of England, lost his life and the Plantagenet name came to an end. But what do we really know of the battle which became known as Bosworth Field? How do we separate fact from legend when our knowledge is based on sources which by any reckoning are meagre, garbled or partisan?In this classic account Michael Bennett provides as detailed and authoritative a reconstruction of the battle, and the events that led up to it, as is possible. It is an enthralling detective story uncovering the real facts behind one of the most famous of British battles.