The Crusader King

Richard I (Penguin Monarchs)

Richard I's reign is both controversial and seemingly contradictory. One of England's most famous medieval monarchs and a potent symbol of national identity, he barely spent six months on English soil during a ten-year reign and spoke French as his first language. Contemporaries dubbed him the 'Lionheart', reflecting a carefully cultivated reputation for bravery, prowess and knightly virtue, but this supposed paragon of chivalry butchered close to 3,000 prisoners in cold blood on a single day. And, though revered as Christian Europe's greatest crusader, his grand campaign to the Holy Land failed to recover the city of Jerusalem from Islam. 
 
Seeking to reconcile this conflicting evidence, Thomas Asbridge's incisive reappraisal of Richard I's career questions whether the Lionheart really did neglect his kingdom, considers why he devoted himself to the cause of holy war and asks how the memory of his life came to be interwoven with myth. Richard emerges as a formidable warrior-king, possessed of martial genius and a cultured intellect, yet burdened by the legacy of his dysfunctional dynasty and obsessed with the pursuit of honour and renown.

Thomas Asbridge is a historian of the Middle Ages specializing in the study of the crusades, knighthood and chivalry, and is Reader in Medieval History at Queen Mary, University of London. He is the author of The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land, The First Crusade: A New History and The Greatest Knight: The Remarkable Life of William Marshal, the Power behind Five English Thrones. He also wrote and presented the landmark three-part BBC Two television series The Crusades.

Thomas Asbridge

A magisterial history of one of the worst ever pandemics [which] focuses on the individuals caught up in the chaos

An up-to-the-hour work of scholarship that is at the same time a page turner: intimate stories of suffering, death and resilience are situated in large scale social, cultural and economic histories of the ravages of the Black Death as it spread across the globe. Asbridge's definitive biography of Yersina pestis, the germ that caused the world’s deadliest disease, is a masterpiece

Compelling, horrifying, humane. This is the history we need now of this cataclysmic pandemic: wide-ranging, personal and hugely accessible. From Kilkenny to Cairo, Moscow to Mecca, Asbridge allows us to see the Black Death through the eyes and in the words of the people all around the world who experienced its terrors, sought to make sense of it, and lived with all its seismic and durable consequences . . . A must-read for anyone who wants to get under the skin and into the mindset of the Middle Ages, or who needs to know how humans react when faced with apocalypse

Tom Asbridge does for the Black Death what John Keegan did for battle: evoking the feeling of being there, recapturing the experience of the sufferers and survivors. Admiring the flawless scholarship, in language that is lucid, vivid, uncluttered with theory and uninfected by jargon, I’d be tempted – if it weren’t too paradoxical – to say that he makes plague a pleasure

This is a rich, multifaceted history that finally makes sense of the research that has shifted our picture of the Black Death so much over the last twenty years. Asbridge’s account of how the Black Death was finally identified reads like a detective novel. Truly mind-opening history, on a global scale, that makes you rethink what you thought you knew.

This ambitious book tracks the pandemic’s global spread, specifically in areas like the Near and Middle East, Byzantium, North Africa, and Asia... With a focus on the human element, the author not only illustrates the terror and upheaval of this terrible time but also looks at the lives of those who lived through the Black Death, from royalty to the working class... Asbridge’s exceptional research ultimately reveals humanity’s capacity for empathy and survival

Blackwell's, The Most Anticipated Books of 2026

In The Black Death, Thomas Asbridge paints a brilliant, ground-up portrait of the calamitous pandemic that ravaged the globe in the fourteenth century. Combining outstanding storytelling, deep historical research, and cutting-edge scientific and archaeological discoveries, Asbridge beautifully conveys both the human experience of mass mortality and its myriad impacts large and small on the world that emerged in the Black Death's shadow

Terrific - and truly terrifying. Asbridge puts a human face, or rather multiple faces, on the Black Death, the most famous pandemic to have afflicted humankind prior to Covid-19. The parallels between the two jump off the pages, thereby making this shockingly detailed discussion of events that took place 600 years ago both recognizable and utterly relevant to today. Arguably one of the best books ever to have been written on this topic

Asbridge has written a very readable, accessible, and engaging history of the Black Death of the late Middle Ages. Global in scope, The Black Death takes readers on a grand tour of the plague’s ravages . . . Using both chronicles and archival records, particularly wills, Asbridge reveals the lived experience both of the leading figures of the day and of ordinary men and women struggling to make sense of the calamity. Not content to simply recount the history of the Black Death, Asbridge places the plague within the wider context of late medieval society and culture (particularly in terms of religion and medicine), both in order to better comprehend how the disease impacted medieval people, and to understand why they reacted to plague in the way that they did

A Global History

In the mid-fourteenth century, a lethal plague struck the medieval world, causing unimaginable suffering and destruction. This terrifying pandemic – the Black Death – was unquestionably one of history’s defining episodes, yet a critical feature of its progress has often been ignored: the disease was not confined to Europe, but rather affected almost all of the known world, including the Near and Middle East, Byzantium, north Africa and Asia. 
 
Tracing the pandemic’s course across the medieval globe, The Black Death contrasts the experiences of different peoples, including Christians, Muslims and Jews, charting this catastrophe’s transformative effects on diverse aspects of medieval life. And crucially, Asbridge demonstrates that the plague was often at its most destructive in the Islamic world, where it ultimately played a role in the collapse of the mighty Mamluk Empire. 
 
The Black Death also brings the human drama of this calamitous era to life, evoking the terror and the turmoil that beset cities such as London, Cairo and Florence. Asbridge reconstructs the lives of the men, women and children who faced the Black Death – from ruling monarchs to peasant farmers – laying bare both the abject horror they endured and the courageous resolve they often demonstrated while striving to survive. 
 
Uncovering a story that speaks to our own age, The Black Death highlights humankind’s capacity for compassion and resilience amidst a global crisis to explain how the medieval world confronted, and ultimately overcame, this shattering pandemic.

Thomas Asbridge

Praise for The Black Death

A magisterial history of one of the worst ever pandemics [which] focuses on the individuals caught up in the chaos

An up-to-the-hour work of scholarship that is at the same time a page turner: intimate stories of suffering, death and resilience are situated in large scale social, cultural and economic histories of the ravages of ...

Compelling, horrifying, humane. This is the history we need now of this cataclysmic pandemic: wide-ranging, personal and hugely accessible. From Kilkenny to Cairo, Moscow to Mecca, Asbridge allows us to see the Blac ...

A magisterial history of one of the worst ever pandemics [which] focuses on the individuals caught up in the chaos

An up-to-the-hour work of scholarship that is at the same time a page turner: intimate stories of suffering, death and resilience are situated in large scale social, cultural and economic histories of the ravages of ...

Compelling, horrifying, humane. This is the history we need now of this cataclysmic pandemic: wide-ranging, personal and hugely accessible. From Kilkenny to Cairo, Moscow to Mecca, Asbridge allows us to see the Blac ...

A magisterial history of one of the worst ever pandemics [which] focuses on the individuals caught up in the chaos

An up-to-the-hour work of scholarship that is at the same time a page turner: intimate stories of suffering, death and resilience are situated in large scale social, cultural and economic histories of the ravages of ...

Compelling, horrifying, humane. This is the history we need now of this cataclysmic pandemic: wide-ranging, personal and hugely accessible. From Kilkenny to Cairo, Moscow to Mecca, Asbridge allows us to see the Blac ...

Books by Thomas Asbridge

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