The Castle Library

By Jack the Good Knight. He captured a king, frightened the French and became one of England's most celebrated medieval warriors, but he was never known as the Black Prince while he was alive. In fact, the nickname doesn't appear in surviving written records until the 16th Century, nearly 200 years after his death. But who was the Black Prince and why can he be considered as one of the greatest knights of all time? Born for battle Edward of Woodstock (1330-1376) was born on 1

By Chris Livemore I am going to start this blog by letting you know that there were no pumpkins in medieval Britain. Not a single one. Pumpkins came from the Americas and only reached Europe after the medieval period in the 16th century. They were first mentioned by Elizabethan herbalist John Gerard in 1597, so we know pumpkins, or 'pompions' as they were known back then, were grown in Tudor gardens, but missed the Middle Ages. So whatever people were doing at the end of Octo

By Chris Livemore I am going to take you back to 1415, a muddy field in France and the famous battle of Agincourt. A formidable French army vastly outnumbered King Henry V's English force by at least 5-1. It looked like the could only be one winner. That is the best medieval analogy that I can come up with to say exactly what it is like for small accounts trying to battle against the algorithms of social media giants to get seen. Fortunately there's a much, much smaller chanc

Being a medieval king was a surprisingly dangerous job. You had wars to fight, nobles who might change sides and kill you, relatives who wanted your throne, which meant killing you, and diseases that nobody really understood but would kill you. There were no antibiotics, no intensive care and, if somebody stabbed you when you were on the toilet, nobody was calling an ambulance.

Trows are creatures from the folklore of Orkney and Shetland, the islands at the very top of Scotland, so far north they are closer to Norway than to London. The word Trow is connected to the Scandinavian heritage of the Northern Isles. It comes through Norn, the old Scandinavian language once spoken in Orkney and Shetland, and is closely related to the word troll.

By Princess Charlotte (Medieval Battle Expert) This is the fifth instalment in my medieval battle series. So far we have covered the battles of Hastings, Crecy, Agincourt and Bosworth but I have yet to cover anything beyond England's northern border and up into Scotland. It was rather busy up there. Here is my account about one of the most important battles that took place during the Wars of Scottish Independence (1296-1328) - Bannockburn. In June 1314, Robert the Bruce faced

A few nights ago my daughter declared loudly that she is obsessed with Robin Hood because he helps people, can shoot arrows and has lots of friends. She also mentioned that he was a fox, all very accurate points if we are basing all of our Robin Hood knowledge entirely on the 1970s Disney film, but Robin Hood wasn't really like that. This one might just surprise you! Spoiler Alert - if my daughter knew that I wrote a medieval history blog, could navigate the internet to fin

By Jack the Good Knight Who was the greatest knight who ever lived? According to Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, it was William Marshal (1147-1219). His biography has Langton saying so at the funeral in 1219, and as the most senior churchman in England he wasn’t given to idle flattery. Over eight hundred years later and you'd be hard pressed to find a contender as strong as William Marshal. A Hostage at Five! William was born around 1147, the younger son of a minor

By Princess Charlotte (Medieval Warfare Specialist) There's something I need to clear up. The Hundred Years' War did not last one hundred years. It lasted an impressive 116 years and ran between 1337 to 1453. And whilst I hugely appreciate that 'The One Hundred and Sixteen Years' War' doesn't have the same ring to it, accuracy matters. Now that is out of the system...why did it start? Like many medieval arguments, it started with land, power and a disagreement over who was en

By Chris Livemore My biggest critics for The Good Knight books have always been my two eldest children - a highly critical 5-year old and the 'laughter-in-chief' advisor in the form of my 2 1/2 year old. So after endless editing, countless rewrites and medieval silliness I was absolutely thrilled that for months all they wanted to hear before bedtime were the adventures of a brave little knight, a lovable dragon and a fearless princess. Surely this was going to be enough to k

For the last year or so, my wife and I try and take our children to the local library before their weekly swimming lesson. And each week they disappear into the picture book shelves within about thirty seconds, foraging for the good stuff! Usually one comes back carrying a book about dragons or knights (don't know where that influence comes from!) and the other somehow finds a book about sharks the size of a small bus.

History has a habit of making the Middle Ages look surprisingly tidy. The Romans disappear. Castles start to appear (everywhere). Knights arrive. Everyone starts speaking in suspiciously Shakespearean English. Lots of fighting. That's not what happened.

Who were the Goths, Vandals, Franks and Anglo-Saxons? A child-friendly guide to four peoples who shaped medieval Europe, from Charlemagne to Alfred the Great, by the author of The Good Knight.

By the summer of 1485, England had spent decades trapped in a bitter struggle between rival branches of the royal family. Kings had been deposed. Princes had strangely disappeared. Noble families had changed sides repeatedly. Nobody seemed entirely sure who would be in charge from one year to the next. Then came Bosworth, which saw the death of a king and beginning of a new dynasty that would forever change England.

By Princess Charlotte (Medieval Warfare Expert) If medieval warfare had a moment when everyone realised the old rules no longer applied, it happened on a hillside in northern France on the 26th August, 1346. When we mention the Battle of Crécy we really should be talking about a French victory that looked pretty inevitable when the two armies met. The English army, led by King Edward III had other ideas. King Edward III's English army was tired, outnumbered and deep inside en

On the morning of 14 October 1066, King Harold Godwinson stood on a ridge in Sussex facing an invading army led by William, Duke of Normandy. By sunset, Harold was dead. England would never be the same again.

Knights Templar, Hospitallers and the other powerful Knight Orders of the Medieval World.

Because medieval London, the London of knights and sieges and plague and enormous political drama, is not gone. It is not buried under glass offices and coffee shops, lost entirely to the Great Fire of 1666 and the Blitz and two thousand years of continuous rebuilding. It is hiding in plain sight. In churches, in ruins, in underground rooms, in a meadow beside the Thames, in two giant wooden statues paraded through the City every November.

Everything you need to know before you go and visit the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum this Autumn

The Magna Carta explained - why it mattered and how a medieval document meant that no King could be above the law.