The Time Traveler's Guide To Medieval England - Ian Mortimer

If there is one book you need to buy for writing a historical fiction novel set in medieval times, it's this one! Open the first few pages and start to see the sights your medieval characters would see. Smell the stench that they would come across on their medieval journey, and experience the tastes of the fourteenth century. This book that is revolutionary in the sensory experience it gives the reader.

To us modern folks, the past can be a little alien. This guidebook will transport you back into the fourteenth century. What do you see? How do you dress? How do you earn a living and how much are you paid? What sort of food will you be offered by a peasant or a monk or a lord? And more important, where will you stay?

The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England is not your typical look at a historical period. This radical new approach shows us that the past is not just something to be studied; it is also something to be lived.

Through the use of daily chronicles, letters, household accounts, and poems of the day, Mortimer transports you back in time, providing answers to questions typically ignored by traditional historians. You will learn how to greet people on the street, what to use as toilet paper, why a physician might want to taste your blood, and how to know whether you are coming down with leprosy.

The result is the most astonishing sensory guide to the middle ages and a medieval way of life. It is informative and entertaining in its detail, and startling for its portrayal of humanity in an age of violence, exuberance, and fear. You simply cannot be without this writing guide beside you when you write a medieval novel!