Rating: 5 out of 5 stars I'm sure we've all seen or heard the question: If you went back in time what item would you take with you? Well my answer is, a copy of this book!It's full of interesting information including what you would eat, dress and do on a daily basis but it is also brilliantly funny.There's details about how surnames were formed, the types of jobs available and things you should definitely avoid, from food to certain clothes, unless of course those clothes are correct for your station.Mount includes interviews with some individuals across all classes that you may come across on your time travelling adventure, which are brilliant for giving further insight into medieval England but also into some of the more well known individuals from the time.You definitely don't feel like you are reading a nonfiction book due to the interviews and humour but I learnt so much.So if you are planning a trip back the medieval ages or maybe you are just interested, I would definitely recommend this book. Personally I don't think I would manage living in the medieval ages so I will happily just stick to having read and enjoyed the book.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars After a long time, I read such a wonderful book about medieval history. Toni Mount presents an enjoyable treat and a guidebook for time-travellers to England during the Medieval period (roughly spanning the 13th-15th centuries). What to wear? Where to eat? Where to stay the night? What currency should you carry? What jobs can you procure? What to do if you fall ill or get robbed on the countryside roads? Where to mend your shoes? Questions like these and much more are explored in this volume.What makes this book different from the other historical guidebooks is the collection of interviews with historical celebrities and cooks and businesswomen, medieval recipes for a feast, herbal medicines, and a huge repository of etymological facts. For example, when the plague arrived in 1348 and thereby decimating the population across Europe, feudalism took a hit. The "villeins", people who had more freedom than the serfs, started leaving their lords' homes after the great pestilence arrived in search of more lucrative tenancies and higher wages. Since they were breaking the law, the word villeins became "villains", meaning criminals. The author does not overburden the reader with a deluge of dry facts. The book reads more like a personal conversation with a medieval guide taking you on a tour than plain non-fiction. It also has some clever and timeless insights on more serious topics like religion, law and order, death and mortality, class dynamics, and warfare. My favourite bits were food and cooking, medicine, fashion, architecture, and livelihoods.Fun facts: A baxter is a female baker and a tapster is a female ale-seller. Turns out medieval England had many opportunities for women to work in various business establishments. So it wasn't all dark ages full of plague and grime and oppression.It's a shame I haven't read other books by Toni Mount and I shall rectify that soon now I have enjoyed the present one. Her website has a wonderful quote which reflects her work and enthusiasm about bringing history alive for readers and students alike."Pleasure should mingle with study so that the student may think learning an amusement, rather than a toil"- Thomas Wolsey (1473-1530)
time traveller's guide to medieval england epub
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Rating: 5 out of 5 stars How to Survive in Medieval England is a time traveller's guide to making it through the basics of medieval life. Focused on the years between 1066 and 1485 the book covers things like clothing, housing, transportation, and religion.What this isn't is an in depth guide to the period. It's not a political look at the time. Nor is it a sociological look. It's very clearly intended to be an armchair guide to a medieval newbie who wants to travel back in time to visit an ancestor of six.The book is well laid out with each section clearly defined. In some places the author imagines interviews with people of the time, interviews which were based on primary sources. The writing style is engaging and easy to read. I zipped through this book in an evening.Not only would this book be good for a time traveler, but it would also be a good starting point for a fiction author. It gives a lot of the basics of what life is like during the time and it covers the things that most fiction readers want to know: what the people ate, what they wore, and how did they go to the bathroom.In all this book is a fun, light read that does what it sets out to do.Five Stars
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars It is always important to have a good guide book when traveling and I for one am comforted by the idea that if I ever end up in medieval England then I am set.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars The author takes an actively engaging point of view with this daily-life vignette - the reader is a time-traveler heading to medieval England to study and experience life. What should the reader pack? How to prepare? What prophylactic healthcare steps must we do before we leave (vaccines, supplements, oral healthcare, and so on)? She goes on to provide glimpses into daily life and survival across a broad range of social strata, from peasant to lord and shows how they differ from one another.Chapters are arranged thematically by subject: social structure & housing, religion & beliefs, clothing, food & shopping, health & medicine (some really hair-raising info here), work & leisure, families, warfare and law & order. The book is meticulously annotated and the chapter notes will provide a wealth of sources for further reading. There's also an abbreviated bibliography and cross-referenced index.The book is modestly illustrated throughout with period illuminated pages showing scenes from domestic life, implements such as eating utensils and tools, and drawings of famous (and unknown) people going about their daily lives.The fact that the book is layman accessible and engagingly easy to read will make it a very good choice for school or library acquisition. I would recommend it for re-enactors as well (SCA and soforth) as there are a number of good illustrations for copyable tools and eating utensils.Five stars.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars Toni's books are always a showstopper and this was no exception. Taking a whimsical turn down medieval England lane, I was absorbed and transported back to a time and place unknown. I enjoyed this so much.
This was everything I expected it to be and more. This felt like a Lonely Planet travel guide for Medieval England. I really enjoyed the language, format and tone of this. Mount relays information in an easy, lighthearted way that is accessible for all. This could be read by anyone regardless of whether or not they had any prior knowledge of Medieval history.Mount includes fictionalised interviews with real figures that are rooted in reference materials from the time period. I thought this was a great way to engage a reader and really helpful in providing examples of different ways of life.I think my favourite part might have been the section regarding Law and Order; there's a small reference to the trial of animals that is particular fascinating/bizarre!Solid 4 out of 5 stars!
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars Guidance on how you live, what you believe, how you look, what you consume and how you fight within mildly off-topic, helpful Did You Know's, information of things that you need to get used to and unlearn from the present day, and imagined narratives from those who lived in medieval times. Overall, it's less stuffy and more informative than other How to Survive's.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars Have you ever imagined what it would be like to travel back to the medieval era? Toni Mount has.With this in mind, she has thus written this very accessible and highly readable, popular history book which is presented in the form of a visitor's guide for anyone wishing to take an experimental traipse through the English landscape at any point between the Norman Conquest of 1066 and Richard III's defeat at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 which heralded the dawn of the Tudor age and the end of the medieval period.Were such a journey actually possible, of course, you might very well decide to give such an excursion a miss. Life in medieval times was tough: Literally half the entire population was wiped out by plague in the 14th century, for example. The book is full of ''Top Tips' such as: "Always keep your purse hidden out of sight under your clothes. Medieval thieves are known as 'cut-purses' for a reason. But at least there are no pickpockets as pockets haven't been invented yet."There are also insights into medieval attitudes: society was often divided into those who prayed (nuns, monks and other church people), those who fought (soldiers and sailors) and those who laboured (the majority).. There are also interesting 'Did you knows?' littered throughout including the rather alarming intelligence that every person living today has so many potential ancestors that were it possible to travel back to the year of the 1215 Magna Carta, four out of every people you would meet would potentially be your own forebearers! The only reason this is not true is scarcely any more reassuring. All our ancestors out of necessity often paired up with their own cousins.Such ickiness aside, this is good read, not a science fiction book at all but full of interesting titbits about what medieval people ate, wore, read (if they could read), how they married, worshipped, fought, relaxed, made money, had sex, travelled and sang.It is a good, highly informative book. But if, as has been said, the past really is a different country then medieval England should be added to the 'Red List' without delay. 2ff7e9595c
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