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.

‘A joyful, erudite book . . . A global Middle Ages for our times’ Jerry Brotton
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A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages is no ordinary travel guide.

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.

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

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

'Serious scholarship and a sightseer’s unbridled enthusiasm make for fascinating armchair time travel' Observer

‘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’ Seb Falk, author of The Light Ages