A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages

byAnthony Bale, Esh Alladi (Read by)

The World Through Medieval Eyes

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From the medieval souks of Tabriz, to the mysterious island of Caldihe, where sheep were said to grow on trees, Anthony Bale brings history alive in A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages, inviting the reader to travel across a medieval world punctuated with miraculous wonders and long-lost landmarks. Journeying alongside scholars, spies and saints, from western Europe to the Far East and the Antipodes, this is no ordinary travel guide, containing everything from profane pilgrim badges and Venetian laxatives to encounters with bandits and trysts with mysterious medieval witches.

Using previously untranslated contemporary accounts from as far and wide as Turkey, Iceland, Armenia, north Africa, and Russia, A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages blurs the distinction between real and imagined places, offering the reader a vivid and unforgettable insight into how medieval people understood their world.

A stunning book . . . weird and wonderful and quietly hilarious, but the enormous fun of this book would not be possible without solid graft — Bale’s dogged research and his diligent crafting of perfect prose
Gerard deGroot, The Times

Superb . . . In his remarkable and expertly executed prose, Bale demonstrates his skill as a historian in his handling of the expansive source material available . . . The micro personal experiences told against the backdrop of macro topography is a Herculean task and one that is undertaken with immense passion and knowledge. A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages is a stunning example of the point where true scholarship meets popular history
Helen Carr, Engelsberg Ideas

About Anthony Bale

Anthony Bale is Professor of Medieval & Renaissance Literature at the University of Cambridge and Professorial Fellow at Girton College, Cambridge. He is a former President of the New Chaucer Society. His previous books include Margery Kempe: A Mixed Life (Reaktion Books) and A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages: the World through Medieval Eyes (Penguin). He was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize (2011) and holds a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (2023-26). He has held fellowships at institutions including Harvard University, The Huntington Library and the University of Melbourne.

Details

Imprint: Viking
Published: 02/11/2023
ISBN: 9780241642689
Length: 669 minutes
Price: £14.00

All editions

A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages

The World Through Medieval Eyes

Format:

Buy the book from:

A stunning book . . . weird and wonderful and quietly hilarious, but the enormous fun of this book would not be possible without solid graft — Bale’s dogged research and his diligent crafting of perfect prose

An enthralling account of medieval travellers . . . [Bale's] enthusiasm is infectious . . . this is a work of serious scholarship

Serious scholarship and a sightseer’s unbridled enthusiasm make for fascinating armchair time travel

A joyful, erudite book, and a global Middle Ages for our times. Journeying from a monastery in Wiltshire to Ethiopia, India and China, Anthony Bale reinvents the period through its intrepid travellers, and in the process redefines the period

Intrepid, entertaining, and unfailingly curious, he has now travelled far and wide in their company; balancing sympathy with scepticism, he marvellously reconfigures the contours of our forebears' knowledge

Rich and wonderful. This is the world as you have never seen it before - and as it will never be seen again. And it's more surprising, extraordinary and bizarre than anything you can possibly imagine

A fascinating read . . . a new fact to be discovered on every page, written with enthusiasm and wisdom

Masterful, panoramic, beautifully written and vividly imagined, A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages is a book to be savoured

About Anthony Bale

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