Medieval

Anthony Bryer describes how, from 1453 to 1923 the dream of a recaptured Byzantium and a resurrected Byzantine Empire continued to haunt the Greek imagination.

J.L. Kirby describes how, early in the fifteenth century, King Henry IV of England ordered three trusted servants to conduct delicate negotiations with the rich cities of the Hanseatic League, whence England imported such precious commodities as dried fish, furs, tar and timber.

During the Wars of the Barons in the reign of Henry III, writes Margaret Wade Labarge, everyday life and tastes are recorded in the household rolls of Eleanor de Montfort.

For nearly four hundred years the “Peaceful and Tranquil City” was the administrative centre of Japan, writes George Woodcock, and for more than a thousand years remained the home of the Japanese Emperors.

Seven hundred years ago King Henry III was defeated at Lewes by Simon de Montfort; their abiding joint memorial is Edward the Confessor’s Abbey which Henry III refounded. By Martin Holmes.

Robert H. Schwoebel explains how, in the fifteenth century, the growing power of the Turks prompted a number of European princes to despatch emissaries to the Levant as intelligence officers on the Eastern Question.

John Andrew Boyle describes how, in the early thirteenth century, the Mongol hordes devastated Turkestan and Persia, where the grandson of Genghis Khan founded a dynasty.

By the close of the fourteenth century the English system of surnames had come into general use, many of them deriving from the trades and crafts followed by their bearers.

Townsend Miller describes the union of the crowns of Castile and Aragon, issued in Spain’s greatest century and accomplished amid civil war and in spite of foreign intervention.

Robin Fedden takes us on a visit to snowy Alpine passes where, for three quarters of a century, at the end of the Dark Ages, Saracen forces dominated the chief land routes between Italy and France.