Posts belonging to Category Medieval History

In 1281 Kulbai Khan (he of the pleasure dome), tried to invade Japan and failed miserably, his fleet being destroyed by the divine wind (kamikaze). The attempted invasion by 100,000 Mongols and its defeat is a legend in Japanese history, so I’m sure the news of the discovery of a Mongol shipwreck from this era [...]

Part of my story Hell has its Demons is set in the fictional Abbey of St. Brett’s. Therefore I’ve had to research monastic life a fair bit. I have just added a page to this site on Abbey officials. I hope you medieval history fans find it useful!   Incoming search terms:histroy and and mark [...]

Elizabeth of York (Queenship and Power) by Arlene Naylor Okerlund In my recent posts about the best and worst Medieval people I have been remiss in not mentioning any women. So to balance that out only slightly, here’s some information about an upcoming biography of a powerful Medieval lady: Elizabeth of York, mother of Henry [...]

Who gives the Middle Ages a bad name? They were bad, but without them history wouldn’t have been so interesting. Again like my article on the Top 5 Medieval People, this list is completely arbitrary. The villains of the medieval age are in my opinion: Innocent IV - the implacable enemy of Frederick II. Innocent’s political [...]

Some of the top stories and most interesting blog posts on Medieval History and Medieval Historical Fiction in the past week or so: Medieval Bookworm reviews Bernard Cornwell’s Death of Kings Medievalists.net discusses evidence for Scottish Medieval Football – although is this any real surprise? Football was around for a long time in the Middle [...]

Random post of the week – who are my top 5 people from the Middle Ages – real historical medieval people, not characters from any of my stories that is! Frederick II Hohenstaufen – not quite the Renaissance prince that earlier historians such as Kantowicz would like to think, but even so still quite amazing [...]

I just added another page to this site’s section on England in 1376 – this time looking at the Key Officials of King Edward III’s household. At present I don’t have much information on these individuals – indeed I suspect that for some of them there won’t be much information available, but they may well [...]

As part of my research for the novel Hell has its Demons, I have been doing some further research on the English Royal Family in 1376, and in particular the Black Prince. I have just added a page Key Retainers of the Black Prince in 1376. Hell has its Demons features a plot against the [...]

As the world economy appears to collapse around our ears perhaps it would be well to think about some of the historic events that have lead us here. I am blaming war. In the Middle Ages the high cost of warfare created the need for the first time to tax a realms subjects on a [...]

I have been reading The Scourging Angel by Benedict Gummer, which is an account of the Black Death in Britain. The books is well worth a look if you are interested in this period of history during the Middle Ages. One thing I came across that I didn’t know is what happened to Jewish populations [...]