Medieval

Richard Cavendish remembers the assassination of Caliph Ali, on January 24th, 661.

Richard Cavendish describes Edward the Confessor's canonisation, on January 5th, 1161.

Ian Bradley on the precarious past of a pure Worcestershire water.

Outremer, the crusader kingdom, and its capital Jerusalem entered a golden age during the 1130s. Simon Sebag Montefiore portrays its extraordinary cast of kings, queens, conquerors and criminals.

A key player in the War of the Roses died on December 30th, 1460.

The historian’s desire for certainty is hard to square with the fragility of sources and their constant reworking by the profession. Casting a cold eye on the remaining evidence relating to the deaths of Edward II and Richard II, Ian Mortimer plots a way forward for his discipline.

One of Europe's most fantastic pieces of medieval architecture was consecrated on 24 October 1260.

The Bamburgh sword, a unique pattern-welded weapon found in Northumbria, has helped shed new light on a critical period of Anglo-Saxon. 

At the beginning of the ninth century, Charlemagne—already the master of Western Europe—was crowned by a calculating Pope as the supreme sovereign of the Christian world. Peter Munz asks what the real significance of his new title really was?

Hywel Williams revisits an article by Peter Munz, first published in History Today in 1959, and asks who needed whose approval most, the great ruler of the Franks or Pope Leo III?