This Saturday I watched the U.S. premiere of The White Queen on Starz, a miniseries based on the Philippa Gregory novel of the same name. The story is set during The War of the Roses, which happened to be the inspiration for George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones. Needless to say, I enjoyed stumbling…
My plans to write a more elaborate post this week were scuttled by my unforgiving travel schedule, but I did have enough time to find another amusing video from the talented folks at Horrible Histories. Hope you enjoy it! (You can watch “Vikings vs. Monks” here too.)
After a lot of book reviews, I’m aiming for some light-hearted fresh-scraped vellum humor for this week, thanks to the folks at Horrible Histories (and YouTube, of course – you can watch it here too). Incidentally, in the Middle Ages vellum was made from calfskin, and parchment was made from sheepskin. I even included a…
This week, I’m pleased to feature a review of Robert Lyndon’s Hawk Quest by guest reviewer Bill Brockman. Bill is an avid reader of historical fiction, but he’s also devoted his life to public service as a Battalion Chief of the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department and a 31-year part-time airman in the Air National Guard….
While I was writing a series of posts of the Magic of Medieval Fiction and the Late Fifth Century and the Age of Arthur, this little gem fell out of the sky: J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fall of Arthur. Needless to say, I dove right in, and my review follows after this image of the book’s…
In my reviews of Bernard Cornwell’s The Winter King and Enemy of God, I noted how the character of Merlin is obsessed with recovering the Thirteen Treasures of Britain, which he believes can restore the power of the old Celtic gods. These treasures, which are sometimes called the Thirteen Hallows, feature prominently throughout Cornwell’s The…
In the midst of my series on the Magic of Medieval Fiction, which is currently focusing on the Arthurian age of the late Fifth Century, a treasure falls into my lap – The Fall of Arthur by J.R.R. Tolkien is being released tomorrow! I purchased an advanced copy on Amazon last night. Here’s an excerpt from…
Enemy of God is the second in Bernard Cornwell’s series The Warlord Chronicles. Its protagonist is still Derfel Cadarn, who is now near thirty years old and one of Arthur’s lords. The book begins immediately where The Winter King ended, after the battle among the British kings at Lugg Vale. Arthur is trying to keep…
I just finished Bernard Cornwell’s 1356, so I’m jumping ahead about nine centuries this week in my series on medieval fiction to allow for a review of yet another great work by one of my all-time favorite authors. “Go with God, but fight like the Devil!” 1356 is the fourth book in Cornwell’s Grail Quest…
The Winter King is the first book in Bernard Cornwell’s masterful retelling of Arthurian legend. From the very first chapter, it is evident that Cornwell’s version would be different from many tales of Arthur. The narrator, for example, is the little-known Derfel Cadarn, writing his story as a monk in a small monastery to Igraine,…
Medieval fiction set in the late Fifth Century is largely of the Arthurian variety, as I noted last week in my post titled Who Was King Arthur? Many scholars believe that Arthur (assuming he really existed) would have lived during the last decades of the Fifth Century and the early Sixth Century. Saint Bede (a…