The real character and abilities of Richard I of England have largely been hidden by his contemporary and subsequent fame. In consequence his achievements and many of the main features of his reign have been wrongly assessed. In these essays John Gillingham goes far to redress the balance by examining Richard's reign in general and in detail. He refutes the idea of Richard as simply a warrior, incapable of thinking in terms of administration or of coherent planning. Richard's ability, and his application to work, compared favourably with that of his father, Henry II. John Gillingham shows how successfully Richard solved some of the perennial problems facing a medieval king. On two specific scores he demonstrates that Richard acted for strategic reasons rather than on whim: his marriage to Berengaria of Navarre in May 1191 was planned as an essential element in an elaborate diplomatic manocuvre; while his death in April 1199, fighting the lord of Chalus, was met in an atempt to solve a serious political challenge not in an impetuous squabble over treasure. John Gillingham brings out both the nature and the importance of war in medieval society. The book also includes a general survey of the history and nature of the Angevin Empire.

This classic poetry sequence is taken from Charlotte Bronte's handwritten notes.

Pulp fictions of medieval England comprises ten essays on individual popular romances; with a focus on romances that, while enormously popular in the Middle Ages, have been neglected by modern scholarship. Each essay provides valuable introductory material, and there is a sustained argument across the contributions that the romances invite innovative, exacting and theoretically charged analysis. However, the essays do not support a single, homogenous reading of popular romance: the authors work with assumptions and come to conclusions about issues as fundamental as the genre's aesthetic codes, its political and cultural ideologies, and its historical consciousness that are different and sometimes opposed. Nicola McDonald's collection and the romances it investigates, are crucial to our understanding of the aesthetics of medieval narrative and to the ideologies of gender and sexuality, race, religion, political formations, social class, ethics, morality and national identity with which those narratives engage.

The diary of the second king of the Plantagenet dynasty who lived in England only six months during his ten year reign.