Terry Jones' Medieval Lives by Terry Jones

The overarching inaccuracy is that the medieval period was static and primitive. Nothing seems to annoy Jones more than the inaccuracies that have circulated as fact about the period he defines as beginning with the Norman Conquest in 1066 and ending when Henry VIII effectively dismantled the old church in 1536. Which means, MEDIEVAL LIVES is serious history for general readers, but it is also history dished up in a fluent voice that chuckles over human folly, is appropriately stern at the abuses of power that caused incredible pain and suffering, and returns with awe at the lights of human achievement that managed to flicker in an epoch of constant bloodshed. He is a scholar and professor of medieval studies.

When Terry Jones joined Monty Python, he kept his day job.

Even if some of his conclusions might be a bit shaky they are still of interest, and can serve as basis for further studies.ĭo avoid the television series: it is very shallow and a bit incoherent because of all the unneccessary animations. I do consider myself well-read, but there was a lot of new stuff in here for me. Some, like financially astute monks and knights, are reaonably well-known, but others, like affluent peasants, sexually liberated women, and kings that served as defenders of the law, are less known. With this book Jones wants to remedy a lot of misconceptions we have of life in the middle ages. My favourite sections were the ones about the friaries that drove the financial and technological development of early middle ages, and the king that has been struck from British lists of regents. Despite that it is cramped with facts and analyses it reads very easliy, and left me with wishing it had been longer. He skillfully uses his comic ability to make the scholarly material more accessible to laypeople, like me. Terry Jones of Monty Pyhton fame is less well-known as an accomplished historian.

Terry Jones' Medieval Lives by Terry Jones