A Distant Mirror

The fourteenth century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand a glittering time of crusades and castles, cathedrals and chivalry and the exquisitely decorated Books of Hours: on the other, a time of ferocity and spiritual agony - a world plunged into chaos. Barbara Tuchman anatomises the century, revealing both the great rhythms of history and the grain and texture of domestic life. Here are guilty passions; loyalties and tracheries; political assasinations; sea battles and sieges; fear of the end of the wold; corruption in high places and a yearning for reform. Here are the proud cardinals, beggars, baliffs, feminists and, dominating all, the knight in his valour and "furious follies", a "terrible worm in an iron cocoon."