Mortimer, Ian (29 February 2012). The time traveller's guide to medieval England: a handbook for visitors to the fourteenth century. Bodley Head. p.318. ISBN 978-1448103782. But what would it really be like to live in Restoration Britain? Where would you stay and what would you eat? What would you wear and where would you do your shopping? The third volume in the series of Ian Mortimer's bestselling Time Traveller's Guides answers the crucial questions that a prospective traveller to seventeenth-century Britain would ask. Holland, Tom (10 October 2008). "Review: The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer". The Daily Telegraph.

The Strand runs from the bridge over the Fleet, just outside Ludgate, along the north bank of the Thames to Westminster. Not only does it afford the medieval traveler the best view of the river, it is also where the most prestigious houses are situated. Several bishops have palaces along this street. Most impressive of all is the Savoy, a royal palace which is home to Edward III in his youth. Later Edward passes it on to his son, John of Gaunt, under whom it becomes the most wonderful town house anywhere in the kingdom. However, it is burnt to the ground during the Peasant's Revolt (1381) and remains a burnt-out shell for the rest of the century. The entire book is consistently vivid and instructive. Ian Mortimer uses the second person and the present tense throughout. So, you travel into the city or you sit down at a table, making it an effective technique for fully engaging the reader. This approach may not be for everyone but I found it compelling and involving. 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.The plot is clear and voluminous. In non-fiction literature, the plot is usually built around the coverage of a topic, and in this book, the author describes in a logical and consistent way about all aspects of life in medieval England.

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. Given the noise and the textures of the place, you may be surprised to learn how few people actually live in the greater towns and cities of England. In 1377 the walls of Exeter encircle six or seven hundred houses where about twenty-six hundred citizens live. But that makes it the twenty-fourth largest community in the whole kingdom. Only the very largest — London, with more than forty thousand inhabitants — can properly be called a great city when compared to the largest Continental cities of Bruges, Ghent, Paris, Venice, Florence, and Rome, all of which have in excess of fifty thousand. However, do not be misled into thinking that towns like Exeter are small, quiet places. The inns add considerably to the total, albeit on a continually shifting basis. Travelers of all sorts — clergymen, merchants, messengers, king's officers, judges, clerks, master masons, carpenters, painters, pilgrims, itinerant preachers, and musicians — are to be found every day in a town. In addition you will come across crowds of local people coming in from the countryside to buy goods and services or to bring their produce to the retailers. When you think of the sheer variety of wares and services which the city provides, from metalwork to leatherwork, from the sheriff 's courts and scriveners' offices to apothecaries' and spicemongers' shops, it soon becomes clear how the daytime population of a city can be two or even three times as great as the number of people living within the walls. And on a special occasion — during a fair, for example — it can be many times greater. A review written by Kathryn Hughes for The Guardian praised the book's different approach and abundance of trivia, adding that "It is Monty Python and the Holy Grail with footnotes and, my goodness, it is fun... The result of this careful blend of scholarship and fancy is a jaunty journey through the 14th century, one that wriggles with the stuff of everyday life... [A] deft summary of life in the high medieval period." [6] The Washington Post's short review by Aaron Leitko vaunted the book as "Fodor's-style framework" and a travel book that gets into "heart of a different time zone". [7]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.

After The Canterbury Tales this has to be the most entertaining book ever written about the middle ages Sue Arnold, Guardian This is the age of Jane Austen and the Romantic poets; the paintings of John Constable and the gardens of Humphry Repton; Britain's military triumphs at Trafalgar and Waterloo. It was perhaps the last age of true freedom before the arrival of the stifling world of Victorian morality. 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. All facets of everyday life in this fascinating period are revealed, from the horrors of the plague and war to the ridiculous excesses of roasted larks and medieval haute couture. 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.The Church was the biggest landholder, employer and source of education of the day, and it firmly disapproved of all this drunkenness and whoring around and the consequent illegitimate babies. No one else minded that much though. But some did, and come the time of Oliver Cromwell and the deposing of King Charles who didn't really mind debauchery and dancing, and liked a bit of gourmand excess and seduction himself, they took off. No trip to medieval England would be complete without a visit to London. It is not just the largest city in England but also the richest, the most vibrant, the most polluted, the smelliest, the most powerful, the most colorful, the most violent, and the most diverse. For most of the century the adjacent town of Westminster — joined to the city by the long elegant street called the Strand — is also the permanent seat of government. To be precise, it becomes the permanent seat of government. In 1300 the government is still predominantly itinerant, following the king as he journeys around the kingdom. However, from 1337 Edward III increasingly situates his civil service in one place, at Westminster. His chancellor, treasurer, and other officers of state all issue their letters from permanent offices there. After the last meeting at York (1335), parliaments too are normally held at Westminster. Richard II does hold six of his twenty-four parliaments elsewhere (at Gloucester, Northampton, Salisbury, Cambridge, Winchester, and Shrewsbury), but doing so only strengthens the feeling that Westminster is the proper place for parliamentary assemblies, so that the commons can more easily attend. All these developments, plus London's links with European traders and banking houses, enhance the standing of the capital. Its importance as an economic and a political center at the end of the century is greater than that of all the other cities in England combined. 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

So, as long as you can get enough to eat, and can avoid all the various lethal infections, the dangers of childbirth, lead poisoning, and the extreme violence, you should live a long time.” ————— In 1300 the nobility speak French, not English! If you can't speak French, you can't command any respect. Only the lowly poor lowly peasants speak English. Nobody authorizes literature written in English. Not until 1350 when King Edward the III, who spoke English, expressed pride in the English language, did aristocrats begin to speak English as well as French. Forget, if you can, the noxious smells and obstructive rubbish of the city and concentrate on its virtues. Look at how many goldsmiths and silversmiths there are, how many spicemongers' shops, how many silk merchants' emporia. There are people who will declare that London is a great city because you can get all the medicines you require. There are certainly more physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries here than anywhere else in England. You will also find a communal running water supply — fed through a series of conduits — even though the pressure is sometimes low, as a result of all the siphoning off to private houses. On certain special occasions the conduits are even made to run with wine — for example, on the arrival of the captive king of France in 1357, or to celebrate the coronation of Henry IV in 1399. The city described above is Exeter, in the southwest of England, but it could almost be any of the seventeen cathedral cities. You could say the same for many of the large towns too, except for the fact that their churches are not cathedrals. Arriving in every one of these places involves an assault on all the senses. Your eyes will open wide at the great churches, and you will be dazzled by the wealth and the stained glass they contain. Your nostrils will be invaded by the stench from the sewage-polluted watercourses and town ditches. After the natural quiet of the country road, the birdsong and the wind in the trees, your hearing must attune to the calls of travellers and town criers, the shouts of labourers and the ringing of church bells. In any town on a market day, or during a fair, you will find yourself being jostled by the crowds who come in from the country for the occasion, who live it up rowdily in the taverns. To visit an English town in the late fourteenth century is a bewildering and extreme sensory experience.In this book Ian Mortimer reveals a country in which life expectancy is in the early thirties, people still starve to death and Catholics are persecuted for their faith. Yet it produces some of the finest writing in the English language, some of the most magnificent architecture, and sees Elizabeth's subjects settle in America and circumnavigate the globe. Welcome to a country that is, in all its contradictions, the very crucible of the modern world. A unique and astonishing social history book which is revolutionary in its concept, informative and entertaining History magazine Another thing that surprised me was the failure to explain small surprising things … for example, the mention of a brown scarlet item of clothing. Apparently, I find after a little research, the word (from mid 13th century French) originally meant fine fabric, of whatever color: "a kind of rich cloth". ( 1200–50; Middle English < Old French escarlate < Medieval Latin scarlata, scarletum, perhaps < Arabic saqirlāṭ, siqillāṭ < Medieval Greek sigillátos < Latin sigillātus decorated with patterns in relief; see sigillate). The author is very good about most such things, which makes this sort of omission strange.