A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages

From the bustling bazaars of Tabriz to the mysterious island of Caldihe, Anthony Bale brings history alive, inviting the reader to travel across a medieval world.<BR><BR>'A joyful, erudite book . . . A global Middle Ages for our times' Jerry Brotton<BR>_____________________<BR><BR>A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages is no ordinary travel guide.<BR><BR>Journey alongside scholars, spies and saints. From western Europe to the Far East, the Antipodes, and the ends of the world. This is a living atlas that blurs the distinction between real and imagined places, containing everything from profane pilgrim badges, Venetian laxatives to encounters with bandits and trysts with princesses.<BR><BR>Using previously untranslated contemporary accounts from as far and wide as Turkey, Iceland, Armenia, north Africa, and Russia, it offers the reader a vivid and unforgettable insight into how medieval people understood their world - a world of stories, desire and fantasies, of cherished pasts and longed-for futures.<BR>_____________________<BR><BR>'Rich and wonderful . . . This is the world as you've never seen it before' Ian Mortimer<BR><BR>'Wisdom fills the pages of this immensely entertaining history' The New Yorker<BR><BR>'Serious scholarship and a sightseer's unbridled enthusiasm make for fascinating armchair time travel' Observer<BR><BR>'Masterful, panoramic, beautifully written and vividly imagined . . . a book to be savoured' Dr Helen Castor, author of Blood and Roses<BR><BR>'An enthralling journey into the past and across the world . . . this book takes us to barely imaginable places' Seb Falk, author of The Light Ages