The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century [Hardcover]

Ian Mortimer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 29, 2009

The past is a foreign country.
This is your guidebook.

A time machine has just transported you back to the fourteenth century. What do you see? How do you dress? How do you earn a living and how much are you paid? What sort of food will you be offered by a peasant or a monk or a lord? And more important, where will you stay?

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.

Through the use of daily chronicles, letters, household accounts, and poems of the day, Morti-mer transports you back in time, providing answers to questions typically ignored by traditional historians. You will learn how to greet people on the street, what to use as toilet paper, why a physician might want to taste your blood, and how to know whether you are coming down with leprosy.

From the first step on the road to the medieval city of Exeter, through meals of roast beaver and puffin, Mortimer re-creates this strange and complex period of history. Here, the lives of serf, merchant, and aristocrat are illuminated with re-markable detail in this engaging literary journey. The result is the most astonishing social history book you're ever likely to read: revolutionary in its concept, informative and entertaining in its detail, and startling for its portrayal of humanity in an age of violence, exuberance, and fear.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this compelling volume, Medieval history expert Mortimer (The Fears of Henry IV) transports readers to jolly, squalid old England for a thorough survey of everyday 14th century life. Going beyond the "nasty, brutish and short" of it, Mortimer's immersive visitor's-guide approach to popular history gives readers a seamless sense of being there. The population is young-"Half of the population is aged twenty-one or less"-but incredibly diverse. The idea that social classes were distinct and few-fighters, prayers, and farmers-gets exploded in Mortimer's examination society and the Medieval character, including everything from humor and juggling to mariners to doctors. Mortimer even argues, convincingly, over relative standards of hygiene ("to regard a medieval kitchen as 'dirty' because it has not been wiped down with modern detergent is to apply our own standards inappropriately"). He also looks at the role of period's four greatest writers of the time , and reveals the horrors of contemporary medicine (with terrifying descriptions of the plague) and law (the outskirts of every town were decorated with the hanged corpses of minor criminals). Mortimer's toungue-in-cheek vistor's guide is an impressive accomplishment, turning 600 years of history transparent to give 21st century audiences a clear view on Medieval life.
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Review

“In this compelling volume, Mortimer transports his readers. . . . Gives readers a seamless sense of being there. . . . An impressive accomplishment, turning 600 years of history transparent to give 21st-century readers a clear view of medieval life.” –Publishers Weekly

“Mortimer addresses every aspect of medieval life, from the mundane to the bizarre. . . . Travel guides are designed to deliver helpful information about faraway places, but this one gets to the heart of a different time zone.” –The Washington Post

“Chock-full of surprises, this is exceptional social history, compellingly told; there should be ‘travel books’ like this for every century. Start reading, and you won't want to stop.” –Library Journal

"The endlessly inventive Ian Mortimer is the most remarkable medieval historian of our time." --The Times (UK)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone; 1 edition (December 29, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1439112894
• ISBN-13: 978-1439112892
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #35,645 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ian Mortimer has BA, PhD and DLitt degrees in history from Exeter University and an MA in archive studies from University College London. From 1991 to 2003 he worked for Devon Record Office, Reading University, the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, and Exeter University. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1998, and was awarded the Alexander Prize (2004) by the Royal Historical Society. He lives with his wife and three children on the edge of Dartmoor, in the southwest of England.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

85 of 86 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I have been to medieval England, January 1, 2010

By 

Stephen J. Davey (Sydney) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century (Hardcover)

I have been to medieval England by immersion in the writing of Ian Mortimer. The smells, the sites, the attitudes of the time have surrounded me. As the reader you become part of the fabric of the place. His writing leads the you through the homes and halls, the churches and landscape of the time. The reading is easy, not cold and academic, but warm and compassionate. For those of us that have only experienced a brief, school based, introduction to history, life in medieval England was probably described as 'nasty, brutish and short'. This is far from a complete picture. Ian brings the time and place to life. You will find that the book not only expands your understanding of the time, but when you finish reading it, you may be left with the feeing that you are leaving old friends behind.

65 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vivid, intimate look at a vanished era, January 6, 2010

By 

Bruce Trinque (Amston, CT United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century (Hardcover)

Ian Mortimer's "The Time Travelers' Guide to Medieval England: A Guidebook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century" is a highly detailed look at life in England several centuries ago, related as if the reader were preparing for an actual journey back in time, studying on what to do (and how to survive) in a vastly different world. The benefits of such an approach are large. The author explains: "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 ... You start to gain an inkling as to why people did this or that, and even why they believed things we find simply incredible."

The book covers virtually every aspect of life and death in Fourteenth century England, from the highest royalty to the lowest peasant (peasants, Mortimer explains, did not call themselves "peasants", but instead would have conceived themselves as members of some subset of society as "rustici" -- countrymen -- or "villani" -- villeins). Social hierarchies, food, clothing, housing, law and order, medicine, travel ... Mortimer seemingly touches upon and describes every aspect of life. He deliberately limits himself to a single century as "medieval" actually covers too extensive a slice of time for accurate summary and even so the author frequently addresses changing behavior over the course of that single century.

A vast amount of information is conveyed in an engaging, lively style. In the very first chapter Mortimer emphasizes his approach to social history by submerging the reader in an ocean of sensory imaginings, descrbing sights and sounds and especially smells of a visit to a medieval English city. And repeatedly thereafter the author reinforces this "you are there" experience. All in all, this is an excellent and highly vivid look at a past era.

46 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent pop history, January 8, 2010

By 

K. Huff (Radnor, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century (Hardcover)

The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England is just that--a comprehensive traveler's guide to the fourteenth century in England. It covers pretty much anything and everything of day-to-day life, from the people you would have encountered, to the clothes you would have worn, to the kind of medical treatment you would have received if you had gotten sick, and much, much more.

There's a lot here I already knew, but a lot I didn't--for example, that pockets were introduced during this century, as were differentiated shoes (left foot versus right, in other words). It's details like this, that you wouldn't normally think are important, that really are important in daily life. At first, the present-tense writing threw me off; but, as Mortimer says in his introduction, once you begin understanding history as happening rather than as has happened, then you'll better understand the complexities of fourteenth-century life.

As the back of the book paraphrases LP Hartley, "the past is a foreign country, they did things differently there..." It's not that things were bad or wrong with the way that people lived six hundred years ago; it's just that people back then had different ways of seeing the world. Take, for example, the chapter on health and medical practices. It's not that medical physicians and surgeons (two different things, up until the 17th century) were ignorant in the sense that we mean it; it's just that they used different areas of knowledge to make a diagnosis and treat a patient. Doctors and surgeons in the fourteenth century probably had as much knowledge as doctors do today--they just used things such as astronomy, religion, and blind faith in their practice. I wish the author had focused a little more on religion and education, however. In all, though, a fascinating study of medieval social life, and unlike any other history book I've read (and much more enjoyable than most). I read this book straight through, but it can also be used a a reference book, to dip into from time to time.