The Castle Library

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 There is a question that I get asked an awful lot. Who was the greatest knight who ever lived? The answer, according to Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury is William Marshal. The Archbishop said this shortly after William Marshal died in 1219. He was the most senior churchman in England. And he described William Marshal as the greatest knight that ever lived as though it were a simple statement of fact rather than a compliment. Eight hundred

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.

Stories about giants have helped to explain landscapes that seemed too large for ordinary people to create. Ancient earthworks, dramatic cliffs, huge boulders and deep valleys have all been attributed to giants long before archaeology could provide alternative explanations. Back in the olden days giants were very, very busy creatures, particularly in England.

Five thousand years ago, the Sumerians were recording some of the world's earliest written texts, the first phase of Stonehenge was being constructed (not the famous stone circles we see today), and much of Europe was still in the late Neolithic period. Around this time, researchers believe story types related to Jack and the Beanstalk may already have been circulating.

As someone who was born in the early 1980s I never imagined that I would have to adapt so quickly to a technology, or even be replaced by one. A vast majority of my working career involved writing and winning funding bids for sustainability projects. And then I stopped winning as many bids, I couldn't work out why, I questioned my ability, my skills, my knowledge, my sanity and then my ability again.

Essex does not have the greatest reputation for castles in the UK. But I think that is a disservice to the county, it is unfair, historically inaccurate - rather like the movie Braveheart - and since the author of The Good Knight series grew up in the seaside resort of Southend-on-Sea I feel duty bound to correct this inaccuracy for his honour.

The name Dracula literally meant "son of Dracul" ("son of the Dragon"). Though in medieval Romanian, dracul had also come to mean devil, which, given subsequent events, felt increasingly appropriate.

The causes and symptoms of the medieval plague that killed half of Europe.