Enlightenment in times of darkness
It is rather ironic that the Dark Ages was not a simple time where everyone rolled around in the mud; rather it was a time of violence and greed, courage, enterprise and learning. It was a time where abbots ran armies and bishops ran brothels; where Welsh wives could divorce spouses on the grounds of bad breath. You could also find a certain alchemist who predicted the invention of the car and minstrels who were more skilled at warmongering than playing the lyre.

The Real Macbeth
Shakespeare's Macbeth is the ultimate tale of murder and betrayal, but perhaps it is less known that the characters were based on a real medieval Scottish monarch. Following the slaughter of Scottish King Malcolm in 1034 by a powerful Norwegian chief, the highlands of Scotland succumbed to Norwegian rule. Soon a native chief called Duncan attempted to free the land from this control, but the Gaelic inhabitants of the north actually preferred to remain under the Norwegian yoke, and a man named Macbeth defeated him near Elgin. In turn, Macbeth overran the whole of Scotland not under Norwegian rule for a period of eighteen years.

Richard vs the 'Barbarian infidels'
During the Crusades, King Richard 'the Lionheart' thought the 'barbaric' Arabs to be a crude race, but this was far from the truth. The Arabs had inherited the ancient sciences of the Greeks and the Romans, which the western Goths had lost in destroying the Roman libraries eight hundred years earlier. Virtually all modern thought: medicine, chemistry, civil engineering, mathematics, and grammar, all modern philosophy and biology came from these so-called "infidels". Arab words such as al'gebra, al'chemy and al'titude, hint at the scope of their contribution.

Verbal legacy?
As we're on the subject of the Crusades, the phrase "going the whole hog' - referring to someone who stops at nothing - comes from this period. The crusaders had contempt for the Muslim dietary laws forbidding the eating of pork. They said that since Muslims used pigskins to make water bags and made use of other parts of the animal as well, why not use the whole hog and also eat the creatures? Eventually the expression going whole hog came to mean setting no limits when referring to anything.

The Mystery of the Medieval Ship
In 2002, archaeologists working on a riverside site in the city of Newport in South Wales accidentally discovered the well-preserved remains of a medieval merchant ship, the only one ever found in Britain. The ship's secrets, hidden from the world for half a millennium, reveal much about the turbulent years of the Wars of the Roses.

Find out more:

Royal Historical Society online bibliography


Council for British Archaeology


Anglo-Saxon Culture: Online Anglo-Saxon resources