A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages

‘Rich and wonderful . . . This is the world as you’ve never seen it before’ Ian Mortimer

‘A joyful, erudite book . . . A global Middle Ages for our times’ Jerry Brotton

'Wisdom fills the pages of this immensely entertaining history' The New Yorker

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From the bustling bazaars of Tabriz, to the mysterious island of Caldihe, where sheep were said to grow on trees, Anthony Bale brings history alive in A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages, inviting the reader to travel across a medieval world punctuated with miraculous wonders and long-lost landmarks. Journeying alongside scholars, spies and saints, from western Europe to the Far East, the Antipodes, and the ends of the world, this is no ordinary travel guide, containing everything from profane pilgrim badges, Venetian laxatives and flying coffins to encounters with bandits and trysts with princesses.

Using previously untranslated contemporary accounts from as far and wide as Turkey, Iceland, Armenia, north Africa, and Russia, A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages is a living atlas that blurs the distinction between real and imagined places. 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.
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‘Masterful, panoramic, beautifully written and vividly imagined . . . a book to be savoured’ Dr Helen Castor, author of Blood and Roses

‘An enthralling journey into the past and across the world . . . this book takes us to barely imaginable places – but the most remarkable thing we find may be ourselves’ Seb Falk, author of The Light Ages