The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century (Ian Mortimer’s Time Traveller’s Guides)

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But what they don't say is that no one much knew what was going on in London if they didn't live close as there wasn't any mass communication and by the time the horses brought the post, changed at every Post House my parents lived in a Post House at one time. It is where the horses were changed for fresh ones combined with an inn it must have been like Chinese whispers. A good story, but who knew how much was true. But then nothing much happened fast then anyway. Imagine a disease were to wipe out forty per cent of the modern population of the UK – more than twenty-five million people. Now imagine a historian in the future discussing the benefits of your death and the deaths of your partner, your children and your friends … You would want to cry out, or hang your head in despair, that historians would blithely comment on the benefits of such suffering. There is no shadow of a doubt that every one of these people you see in 1348 – whether they will die or survive – deserves your compassion. When you see women dragging their parents’ and children’s corpses into ditches, weeping and screaming – when you listen to a man who has buried all five of his sons with his own hands, and, in his distress, he tells you that there was no divine service when he did so, and that the death bell did not sound – you know that these people have entered a chasm of grief beyond description.” (p.203)

Having emphasized that the focus of this book is fourteenthcentury England, a few caveats must be added. It is not possible to recover every detail of the period on the basis of fourteenth-century English evidence alone; sometimes the contemporary record is frustratingly incomplete. Also we cannot always be sure that the manner of doing something in 1320 necessarily held true in 1390. In some cases we can be sure that things changed dramatically: the entire nature of English warfare altered over this period, and so did the landscape of disease, with the catastrophic advent of the plague in 1348. Thus, where necessary, details from the fifteenth century have been used to inform descriptions of the later part of the fourteenth century, and the thirteenth century has been used to inform judgments about the early part. This blurring of time boundaries is only necessary where very difficult questions are raised. For example, we have relatively few sources underpinning our understanding of courtesy and manners in the fourteenth century whereas we have several excellent sources for the early fifteenth. Since it is unlikely that good manners developed overnight, the later evidence has been used as the fullest and most accurate available. The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England is not your typical look at a historical period. This radical new approach shows us that the past is not just something to be studied; it is also something to be lived.

Smithfield, just outside the city walls, is home to the main meat market of the city. Needless to say, this is where people regularly meet in the course of shopping. Even more people gather, however, for the three-day fair held here every St. Bartholomew's Day (August 24). As it is still a field, literally, it provides a suitable ground for jousts and tournaments. Mortimer also tries to bring us living history by using the second person and the present tense throughout. So, you are travelling into the city, you are sitting down at table, you are eyeing up a cross-looking band of outlaws and deciding whether it is safe to run. It is a verbal tic, the present tense especially, which has become the default voice for documentaries and which is now creeping into history writing. This relentless presentism can seem irritating, until you remember that the perfect tense, in which history has conventionally been told, is equally arbitrary. As Mortimer points out, if you are to experience the 14th century the way he intends, then you must do so in the unspooling moment, oblivious to what lies ahead. As lively as it is informative. His (Mortimer's) work of speculative social history is eminently entertaining but this doesn't detract from the seriousness and the thorough research involved Financial Times As soon as you start to think of the past happening (as opposed to it having happened), a new way of conceiving history becomes possible. The very idea of traveling to the Middle Ages allows us to consider the past in greater breadth — to discover more about the problems which the English have had to face, the delights they found in life, and what they themselves were like. As with a historical biography, a travel book about a past age allows us to see its inhabitants in a sympathetic way: not as a series of graphs showing fluctuations in grain yields or household income but as an investigation into the sensations of being alive in a different time. You can start to gain an inkling as to why people did this or that, and even why they believed things which we find simply incredible. You can gain this insight because you know that these people are human, like you, and that some of these reactions are simply natural. The idea of traveling to the Middle Ages allows you to understand these people not only in terms of evidence but also in terms of their humanity, their hopes and fears, the drama of their lives. Although writers have traditionally been forced to resort to historical fiction to do this, there is no reason why a nonfiction writer should not present his material in just as direct and as sympathetic a manner. It does not make the facts themselves less true to put them in the present tense rather than the past.

Mortimer, Ian (2020-11-12). The Time Traveller's Guide to Regency Britain. Random House. ISBN 978-1-4735-4798-8. An original, entertaining and illuminating guide to a completely different world: England in the Middle Ages. Imagine a disease were to wipe out 40 percent of the modern population of the UK—more than 25 million people. Now imagine a historian in the future discussing the benefits of your death and the deaths of your partner, your children, and your friends … You would want to cry out, or hang your head in despair, that historians could blithely comment on the benefits of such suffering. There is no shadow of a doubt that every one of these people you see in 1348—whether they will die or survive—deserves your compassion. When you see women dragging their parents’ and children’s corpses into ditches, weeping and screaming—when you listen to a man who has buried all five of his sons with his own hands, and, in his distress, he tells you that there was no divine service when he did so, and that the death bell did not sound—you know that these people have entered a chasm of grief beyond description.”

Table of Contents

The Royal Palace in the Tower of London. You are, of course, familiar with the White Tower, the great building left by William the Conqueror, but most of the visible castle — including the moat — actually dates from the thirteenth century. Here is situated an extensive royal palace, including a great hall, royal solar (private living room), and a multitude of lordly chambers. In addition, a royal mint is based here, as are the royal library and the royal menagerie. Edward Ill's collection of lions, leopards, and other big cats is kept here from the late 1330s and is continually being supplemented with new animals.