Ebook: A Strong Land & a Sturdy: England in the Middle Ages

"A Strong Land and a Sturdy" looks at Britain from the time of the Norman Conquest until the end of the English kings’ wars in France in 1453. The great events it records are not the ones usually found in history books: they are the appearance of the first heroic romances, the emergence of English as a language for poetry and written works, the splendors of Richard II's court, the building of cathedrals and the making of manuscripts. And the Normans appear not as warriors, but as great organizers, who made England the first efficiently governed state in Europe.

All this is set down using the words and pictures left by men who lived in those days, men like Bartholomew the Englishman who in the thirteenth century called England "a strong land and a sturdy, and the most plentiful corner of the world; so rich a land that it scarcely needs the help of any other country."

The book is lavishly illustrated with over sixty black-and-white photographs and eight pages of full color.