A History of Britain in the Late Middle Ages

The Hollow Crown

An exciting new author to add to the Penguin Press history list.

Miri Rubin is Professor of History at Queen Mary, University of London. Her previous books include Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture and Gentile Tales: Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews. She is currently writing a cultural history of the Virgin Mary for Penguin.

There is no more haunting, compelling period in Britain's history than the later middle ages. The extraordinary kings - Edward III and Henry V, the great warriors, Richard II and Henry VI, tragic inadequates killed by their failure to use their power, and Richard III, the demon king. The extraordinary events - the Black Death that destroyed a third of the population, the Peasants' Revolt, the Wars of the Roses, the Battle of Agincourt. The extraordinary artistic achievements - the great churches, castles and tombs that still dominate the landscape, the birth of the English language in The Canterbury Tales. For the first time in a generation, a historian has had the vision and confidence to write a spell-binding account of the era immortalised by Shakespeare's history plays. The Hollow Crown brilliantly brings to life for the reader a world we have long lost - a strange, Catholic, rural country of monks, peasants, knights and merchants, almost perpetually at war - but continues to define so much of England's national myth.

Miri Rubin

Miri Rubin [is] one of the most interesting and original of British medieval historians ... There is room for a whole book on this subject and Rubin is uniquely equipped to write it ... a capacious and vastly learned book ... a treasury

a wonderfully illuminating history of the mother of Jesus

A remarkable, ambitious and wide-ranging account ... sympathetic and eloquent

A History of the Virgin Mary

Mary, the mother of Jesus, is one of the most powerful, influential and complex of all religious figures. The focus for women, the inspiration of faith, the subject of innumerable paintings, sculptures, pieces of music and churches, Mary is so entangled in our world that it is impossible to conceive of the history of Western culture and religion without her.  <I>Mother of God</I> is the story of that presence and a book that raises profound questions about the human experience.

Miri Rubin

Praise for Mother of God

Miri Rubin [is] one of the most interesting and original of British medieval historians ... There is room for a whole book on this subject and Rubin is uniquely equipped to write it ... a capacious and vastly learne ...

a wonderfully illuminating history of the mother of Jesus

A remarkable, ambitious and wide-ranging account ... sympathetic and eloquent

Miri Rubin [is] one of the most interesting and original of British medieval historians ... There is room for a whole book on this subject and Rubin is uniquely equipped to write it ... a capacious and vastly learne ...

a wonderfully illuminating history of the mother of Jesus

A remarkable, ambitious and wide-ranging account ... sympathetic and eloquent

Miri Rubin [is] one of the most interesting and original of British medieval historians ... There is room for a whole book on this subject and Rubin is uniquely equipped to write it ... a capacious and vastly learne ...

a wonderfully illuminating history of the mother of Jesus

A remarkable, ambitious and wide-ranging account ... sympathetic and eloquent

Books by Miri Rubin

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