The autobiography of Gerald of Wales, translated from the Latin, offers a compelling picture of medieval life. Gerald of Wales, the son of a Norman Baron and the grandson of a Welsh Princess, is one of the most gifted and entertaining of medieval writers. His autobiography, translated from the Latin, presents the story of an Archdeacon who, despite his passionate efforts, never became a Bishop; it is the self-revelation of a man as able and courageous as he was vain and eccentric, and as devout and serious as he was flamboyant and humorous, a vivid picture of twelfth-century kings and prelates, of politics and travel, full of strange adventures at home and abroad, told with frankness and power, and without a counterpart in the literature of his day. Moreover, the volume presents a vivid picture of medieval life in general. The late H. E. BUTLER was Professor of Latin at University College, London.

In this collection of essays, Antonia Gransden brings out the virtues of medieval writers and highlights their attitudes and habits of thought. She traces the continuing influence of Bede, the greatest of early medieval English historians, from his death to the 16th century. Bede's clarity and authority were welcomed by generations of monastic historians. At the other end is a humble 14th-century chronicle produced at Lynn with little to add other than a few local references.

A fascinating collection of stories from Welsh history collected from Phil Carradice's popular BBC Wales blog, gathered together for the first time in a book. Among the incredible stories are... The man from Clydach who invented a Death Ray The Welsh aristocrat whose parrot once bit Herman Goering on the nose The witch who cursed the launch of a warship at Pembroke Dockyard The battle that was won by a herd of cows These stories are part and parcel of Welsh heritage and make history interesting. Snapshots of Welsh History - Without the Boring Bits covers a wide range of Welsh history topics. Written in Phil's unique easy-to-read yet elegant style, these stories are funny, tragic, sad and hilarious. Yet the one thing they all have in common is that they make compelling reading.

The Normans have long been recognised as one of the most dynamic forces within medieval western Europe. With a reputation for aggression and conquest, they rapidly expanded their powerbase from Normandy, and by the end of the twelfth century had established themselves in positions of strength from England to Sicily, Antioch to Dublin. Yet, despite this success recent scholarship has begun to question the ‘Norman Achievement’ and look again at the degree to which a single Norman cultural identity existed across so diverse a territory. To explore this idea further, all the essays in this volume look at questions of Norman traditions in some of the peripheral Norman dominions. In response to recent developments in cultural studies the volume uses the concepts of ‘tradition’ and ‘heritage’ to question the notion of a stable pan-European Norman culture or identity, and instead reveals the degrees to which Normans adopted and adapted to local conditions, customs and requirements in order to form their own localised cultural heritage. Divided into two sections, the volume begins with eight chapters focusing on Norman Sicily. These essays demonstrate both the degree of cultural intermingling that made this kingdom an extraordinary paradigm in this regard, and how the Normans began to develop their own distinct origin myths that diverged from those of Norman France and England. The second section of the volume provides four essays that explore Norman ethnicity and identity more broadly, including two looking at Norman communities on the opposite side of Europe to the Kingdom of Sicily: Ireland and the Scandinavian settlements in the Kievan Rus. Taken as a whole the volume provides a fascinating assessment of the construction and malleability of Norman identities in transcultural settings. By exploring these issues through the tradition and heritage of the Norman’s ‘peripheral’ dominions, a much more sophisticated understanding can be gained, not only of the Normans but of the wider cultural forces at work with the medieval west.