The Black Death

'The entire world is trifling and futile. It ends in death and annihilation'. Ibn Khaldun, 1377 
 
The Black Death of 1347-53 was the single most devastating natural disaster in the known history of humanity. It ruined great empires and caused incalculable suffering, killing perhaps half of the medieval world’s population. 
 
Thomas Asbridge's remarkable new book is the first to describe these waves of catastrophic plague as a pan-Eurasian phenomenon. The disease spread with fearsome rapidity, coursing along trade and travel routes, claiming the lives of millions. 
 
While there are substantial gaps in our evidence from this period, many documents surviving – including chronicles, poems, letters – that make these events shocking and immediate. Asbridge uses every kind of record to give the reader a powerful sense of how these large, sophisticated and globalized societies were brought to their knees by this terrible scourge. 
 
The aftershocks of the Black Death continued for many years after its initial, catastrophic appearance and these too are fully discussed here. This is a superb book on an awe-inspiring and deeply frightening era in human history.

Thomas Asbridge is a historian of the Middle Ages specializing in the study of the crusades, knighthood and chivalry, and is Reader in Medieval History at Queen Mary, University of London. He is the author of The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land, The First Crusade: A New History and The Greatest Knight: The Remarkable Life of William Marshal, the Power behind Five English Thrones. He also wrote and presented the landmark three-part BBC Two television series The Crusades.

The Black Death of 1347-53 was the single most devastating natural disaster in the known history of humanity. It ruined great empires and caused incalculable suffering, killing perhaps half of the medieval world’s population. 
 
Thomas Asbridge's remarkable new book is the first to describe these waves of catastrophic plague as a pan-Eurasian phenomenon. The disease spread with fearsome rapidity, coursing along trade and travel routes, claiming the lives of millions. 
 
While there are substantial gaps in our evidence from this period, many documents surviving – including chronicles, poems, letters – that make these events shocking and immediate. Asbridge uses every kind of record to give the reader a powerful sense of how these large, sophisticated and globalized societies were brought to their knees by this terrible scourge. 
 
The aftershocks of the Black Death continued for many years after its initial, catastrophic appearance and these too are fully discussed here. This is a superb book on an awe-inspiring and deeply frightening era in human history.

Thomas Asbridge

The Crusader King

Richard I's reign is both controversial and seemingly contradictory. One of England's most famous medieval monarchs and a potent symbol of national identity, he barely spent six months on English soil during a ten-year reign and spoke French as his first language. Contemporaries dubbed him the 'Lionheart', reflecting a carefully cultivated reputation for bravery, prowess and knightly virtue, but this supposed paragon of chivalry butchered close to 3,000 prisoners in cold blood on a single day. And, though revered as Christian Europe's greatest crusader, his grand campaign to the Holy Land failed to recover the city of Jerusalem from Islam. 
 
Seeking to reconcile this conflicting evidence, Thomas Asbridge's incisive reappraisal of Richard I's career questions whether the Lionheart really did neglect his kingdom, considers why he devoted himself to the cause of holy war and asks how the memory of his life came to be interwoven with myth. Richard emerges as a formidable warrior-king, possessed of martial genius and a cultured intellect, yet burdened by the legacy of his dysfunctional dynasty and obsessed with the pursuit of honour and renown.

Thomas Asbridge

Books by Thomas Asbridge

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter