The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England

What to eat and wear, fear and enjoy in medieval England Suppose you could actually visit medieval England. Where would you sleep? What would you eat? What should you wear? And how would you know whether you were falling ill with the plague? Ian Mortimer turns social history into a practical guide for the imaginary traveller. Drawing on chronicles, legal records, household inventories, medical writing and literature, he reconstructs the sights, sounds, smells and assumptions of fourteenth-century life. The result overturns the familiar picture of a uniformly filthy, static and backward Middle Ages. England emerges as a varied society of towns and markets, changing fashions, difficult journeys, religious devotion, social mobility, violence and humour. Mortimer guides readers through housing, food, health, law, clothing, work and entertainment while explaining the ideas and rules that made this world intelligible to the people living in it. ‘Ian Mortimer is the most remarkable medieval historian of our time’ The Times ‘After The Canterbury Tales this has to be the most entertaining book ever written about the middle ages’ Guardian