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Terry Jones' Medieval Lives
Terry Jones' Medieval Lives
Oct 24, 2024 10:31 PM

Author:Alan Ereira,Terry Jones

Terry Jones' Medieval Lives

Was medieval England full of knights on horseback rescuing fainting damsels in distress? Were the Middle Ages mired in superstition and ignorance? Why does nobody ever mention King Louis the First and Last? And, of course, those key questions: which monks were forbidden the delights of donning underpants... and did outlaws never wear trousers?

Terry Jones and Alan Ereira are your guides to this most misrepresented and misunderstood period, and they point you to things that will surprise and provoke. Did you know, for example, that medieval people didn't think the world was flat? That was a total fabrication by an American journalist in the 19th century. Did you know that they didn't burn witches in the Middle Ages? That was a refinement of the so-called Renaissance. In fact, medieval kings weren't necessarily merciless tyrants, and peasants entertained at home using French pottery and fine wine.

Terry Jones' Medieval Lives reveals Medieval Britain as you have never seen it before - a vibrant society teeming with individuality, intrigue and innovation.

Reviews

Jones laces the latest academic research with his own increasingly avuncular humour. Who says history can't be fun? In the hands of Professor Jones, how could it be anything else?

—— Observer

Jones really knows his subject, he is also a passionate apologist for the Middle Ages.... and you also learnt things which made your view of the period a little more complex

—— Independent

Jones is a reliable and accurate guide to his period, mercifully free from the pomposity that afflicts so many telly historians. Three cheers for Terry Jones

—— London Evening Standard

Brimming with life, colour, and yes, facts too

—— Daily Telegraph

Hoffman asks many questions, bringing a voice of reason to the irrational, reaching out for reconciliation

—— Sunday Times

'Man is an excellent guide...well-versed in Mongolian, he has travelled extensively in the country while researching the more mysterious elements Genghis' life, and this experience shines through the book...he writes knowledgeably'

—— Literary Review

A top biography...This is great, grisly stuff and an education for anyone

—— Evening Standard

... This bright, engaging and breezy book ... suits the tenor of our times.

—— The Times

A remarkable feat of documentary detail and novelistic vividness...an unfolding literary event

—— New York Times Book Review

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father's story. Maus approaches the unspeakable through the diminutive. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), shocks us out of any lingering sense of familiarity and succeeds in 'drawing us closer to the bleak heart of the Holocaust'

—— New York Times

A quiet triumph, moving and simple - impossible to describe accurately, and impossible to achieve in any medium but comics

—— Washington Post

All too infrequently, a book comes along that' s as daring as it is acclaimed. Art Spiegelman's Maus is just such a book

—— Esquire

A remarkable work, awesome in its conception and execution... at one and the same time a novel, a documentary, a memoir, and a comic book. Brilliant, just brilliant

—— Jules Feiffer

Maus is a masterpiece, and it's in the nature of such things to generate mysteries, and pose more questions than they answer. But if the notion of a canon means anything, Maus is there at the heart of it. Like all great stories, it tells us more about ourselves than we could ever suspect

—— Philip Pullman

Spiegelman's Maus changed comics forever. Comics now can be about anything

—— Alison Bechdel

Reading [his work] has been an amazing lesson in storytelling

—— Etgar Keret

It can be easy to forget how much of a game-changer Maus was.

—— Washington Post
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