Author Description

This collection of essays takes a fresh and invigorating look at late medieval English society by focusing not on how people lived but on how they saw the world and their place in it. Alongside contributions on how different social groups saw themselves and were seen by others are more general discussions of key aspects of fifteenth-century life: attitudes to the rule of law, to the power of the ruler, to education, to honour and service and finally to death. These essays, which include a selection of attractive and often unusual illustrations, create a unique introduction to a troubled and controversial century, which in the past has been seen variously as 'the waning of the middle ages' and the forcing ground of modern society.