He retells their story and offers insights into the historical forces that shape Arab and Islamic consciousness today.

    The King is coming to visit! The lord and lady of Camdenton Manor must work quickly to prepare for his arrival. It will take weeks to ready rooms, set up tents, and prepare the feast itself. Everyone is busy hunting and hawking, brewing and churning. “A veritable feast of a book.”—School Library JournalThis nonfiction picture book about life in medieval times features detailed illustrations to explore again and again. “A sumptuous look at the gastronomic inclinations of nobility in the Middle Ages is parlayed into a fascinating story about an upcoming visit to Camdenton Manor by the king and his large retinue.”—BooklistSupports the Common Core State Standards

    For decades his navy held the balance of power in the northern seas, and it was he who cleared the Vikings out of the Hebrides.

    Alone on the cobblestones, he cries out to Israel, to the Lord his God, to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. He is answered instead by Jesus Christ.

    Could he really have been as black as he was painted by Tudor chroniclers and, if he wasn't, why do some historians so on saying that he was? Why is his enlightened legislation so little noticed? Is there any real evidence that he murdered his nephews, the princes in the Tower? Did he really have a hunchback or was it invented for him after his death as 'proof of villainy'? Is Shakespeare's Richard III a portrayal of the real Richard or no more than a character in a work of fiction? Was St, Thomas More really a witness of truth?Good King Richard? is an account of Richard III's life and times, character, appearance, and reign, but above all of the Great Debate which has raged since his death between traditionalists and revisionists. Written to mark the 500th anniversary of his accession to the throne, this is a history of his reputation from 1485 to the present.Contemporary writers whose works are examined include the author of a monastic chronicle, an Italian visitor to fifteenth-century London, a Flemish politician, a chantry priest in the Midlands and a London draper. Later protagonists whose involvement and views are recorded include a formidable array of quarrelsome historians and a colourful assortment of the famous. Among the latter are Jane Austen, Francis Bacon, Charles II, Sir Winston Churchill, Charles Dickens, David Garrick, HRH the Duke of Gloucester, David Hume, Charles Lamb, Henry Cabot Lodge, Louis XVI, Sir John Millais, Laurence Olivier, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Walter Scott, Rex Stout, Horace Walpole, John Wesley and Sir Christopher Wren.

    Jean Bony, whose reputation as a medievalist is worldwide, presents its development as an adventure of the imagination allied with radical technical advances—the result of a continuining quest for new ways of handling space and light as well as experimenting with the mechanics of stone construction. He shows how the new architecture came unexpectedly to be invented in the Paris region around 1140 and follows its history—in the great cathedrals of northern France and dozens of other key buildings—to the end of the thirteenth century, when profound changes occurred in the whole fabric of medieval civilization. Rich illustrations, including comprehensive maps, enhance the text and themselves constitute an exceptionally valuable documenation. Despite its evident scholarly intention, this book is not meant for specialists alone, but is conceived as a progressive infiltration into the complexities of history at work, revealing its unpredictable vitality to the uninitiated curious mind.