Alexander Broadie: Introduction to Medieval Logic (1993)

Edition: Oxford University Press, 1993
Review number: 1505

The title is perhaps somewhat misleading. I would expect that a book introducing medieval logic should be fairly easy to follow for someone like myself, with a doctorate in modern mathematical logic and an interest in medieval philosophy. But the first few chapters assume a fair amount of prior understanding of the form of logic used in the middle ages, i.e. one based on natural language rather than symbolic representation of carefully pre-defined and abstract ideas of such ideas as truth, implication, proof and so on (this, the basis of modern mathematical logic, being the legacy of Frege and others such as Russell, Tarsky, and Gödel).

In fact, what is eventually revealed is a way to relate the arguments of medieval logicians, which can seem weird and monumentally pedantic, to a process which moves from the potential ambiguities of natural language towards more abstract understanding of the processes of logic. No matter how interesting that might be to me, though, the path travelled through mainly fourteenth century logical arguments is one I found hard to follow. For me, the best part of the book is the concluding chapter, in which Broadie discusses the transition from scholastic logical thought to humanistic ideas of proof, more based on rhetoric and Ciceronian legal arguments, and the relation of scholasticism to the ideas of modern mathematics.

I would have welcomed a lot more historical context, and also some way to connect the thematically organised discussion to that context

My rating: 5/10.

Anicius Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy (c. 524 AD)

Translation: V.E. Watts
Edition: Penguin Classics, 1969
Review number: 1475

There are a few books which have had a huge influence on the age in which they were written. However, few people today read The Consolation of Philosophy, which could be considered the foundation of medieval culture.

Boethius was a statesman in sixth century Italy, just after the final fall of the Western Roman Empire, but was disgraced and imprisoned; like many politicians in that situation, he maintained his innocence. But in prison, according to the account in this book, he underwent a mystical experience, being visited by a woman he eventually recognises as Philosophy, who goes on to teach him to treat his situation in what could nowadays be termed a "philosophical manner".

What appealed to the medieval mind about this? From the literature of western Europe over the next nine hundred or so years, it is partly the mystical element, and partly the allegorical flavour - the figure of Philosophy is a precursor of many later personifications. Not only that, but Boethius' distillations of classical philosophy, as well as his translations of Greek philosophers into Latin, were the main way in which their thought survived in an age of little literacy and where Greek scholarship was almost non-existent. Writers and thinkers influenced by The Consolation of Philosophy would include almost every notable figure from the best part of a thousand years of history.

The only book I can think of with a similar effect is Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, which has many points in common with The Consolation of Philosophy. The later work was basically a way to make it easier to understand Puritan ideas about Christian salvation, while the earlier was doing the same with classical philosophy;  both had allegorical elements, Bunyan's more so; both authors were imprisoned, with prison playing an important part in their books; both proved incredibly popular and influential. The influence of Bunyan continues to this day, and many of his figures of speech have entered the English language ("slough of despond", for example); Boethius was responsible for the popularity of the idea of a "wheel of fortune", though he did not invent it.

Essentially, what Boethius is doing is a popular exposition  of neo-Platonist thought. He was a Christian, and yet is pretty circumspect about his theology in the book, talking of "God" but never mentioning Jesus. Some readers have wondered whether he was a Christian in name only, as he would have needed to be to be a successful politician in sixth century Italy, but his approach to philosophy inspired the medieval mind because he is able to start bringing the pagan thought into a monotheistic context, a process which culminated in the elaborate systems of Thomas Aquinas celebrated in Dante's Divine Comedy.

In modern editions such as this one, The Consolation  of Philosophy is divided into books each made up of several sections, which each end with poetry. Boethius was famed for his Latin prose style, though Watts does admit that the poetry is uneven in quality. Not having ever read the original, I wouldn't know, and it is perhaps less apparent in this translation, which I would suspect is not as great as Boethius at his best nor as poor as his worst, but is more even throughout. This is also one of the most academic of the Penguin Classics translation in its presentation (the actual translation is clear and readable enough), with footnotes identifying references in learned articles throughout.

Ours is an age which has learnt from the romantics to value "originality". Perhaps less so now than a few years ago (after all, what is original in the albums of the latest winners of the X Factor). I suspect that this is part of the reason why Boethius' work fell out of favour. As a philosopher, he does not claim to have any new insights - just ways to put together old ones to appeal to modern (in his time) tastes. As a distillation of ancient philosophy, the alternating prose and poetry is perhaps harder to get into today when it is not the kind of writing commonly encountered; there are far better introductions for the modern reader, which would go on to later thought - for a philosophy beginner who wants a close modern equivalent, where fiction and philosophy mingle in an approachable manner, I would recommend Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World, aimed at a young teen audience but with plenty of charm for older readers.

The Consolation of Philosophy appeals to me because I have long been interested in the medieval way of thought. Perhaps in itself it has less to offer than as a window into a very different, yet recognisable, world to the modern West. But in the end I rate it at 8/10.

Julian Rathbone: Kings of Albion (2000)

Edition: Abacus, 2001
Review number: 1458


L.P. Hartley's line "The past is a foreign country" is often quoted, but it can be hard to realise just how different things were in former times. Kings of Albion is a novel which literalises the quotation to great effect. The plot is about an expedition sent out by the threatened Indian kingdom of Vijayanagara, to see if they can learn something from the far away English, who are rumoured even that far away to be the most warlike race on Earth. And the rumour turns out to be accurate, for they arrive at their destination in 1460, at the bloodiest period of the Wars of the Roses.

This device makes it possible for Rathbone to make us see how different England was 550 years ago, as the cultured Indian delegation react in horrified fascination to the things they see. Apart from being clever, Kings of Albion is also funny, with anachronism being used in a creative and humorous fashion: it is not out of place for the party to survive being caught between two gangs of youths from rival factions in Verona, but it seems so to the modern reader, because this is an episode from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. This sort of pre-echo is used to evoke films, plays, books, and twentieth century physics without technically breaking the historical mode of the novel.

Vijayanagara is a kingdom about which fairly little is known; according to Rathbone's preface, this is why he chose it, on the advice of an expert in Indian history. It enables Rathbone to construct a culture which produces a delegation with a philosophical outlook more like a person of today than a medieval Englishman, which heightens the shared reactions that we as readers have with the characters in the delegation.

Some modern devout Christians could still be offended by the religious themes of Kings of Albion, which concern on the one hand links between Hinduism and the origins of the medieval cult of the Virgin Mary, and some of the practices of the fifteenth century church on the other. But on the whole, most people should enjoy this evocation of medieval England which is reminiscent of the spirit of George MacDonald Fraser.

My rating: 9/10.

Jonathan Sumption: The Hundred Years War III - Divided Houses (2009)

The third volume of Sumption's brilliant history of the Hundred Years War has finally appeared, almost twenty years after the first. It covers thirty years, 1369-1399, a period which saw a weariness from the war arising in both France and England, and neither side being wholly successful in their endeavours (France doing rather better in this respect, undoing many of the concessions which were made to Edward III following victories in the earlier part of the century). The low key nature of the fighting is one of the reasons for this impression of weariness; the French leaders had decided that the lesson to be had from battles like Crecy and Poitiers was that defeats could best be avoided by refusing to fight large scale engagements.

It was also a period when experienced kings of England and France were replaced by teenagers (Charles VI and Richard II) or became incapable of governing (Edward III and Charles VI), leading up to Henry Bolingbroke's deposition of Richard II at the end of the book. The only really dynamic aspect is that the war spread to other nations, involving Scotland, Portugal, Flanders, Castile and the Papacy, during this period.

The great virtues of Divided Houses are of course shared with the first two volumes. The detailed knowledge of sources both well known and obscure continues, with the best known for this time being Froissart's entertaining chronicles, which were also a source used by Shakespeare for his history plays. This is combined with accessible writing which is not noticeably partisan, unlike most of the more populist histories of the period I have seen, in English or French - the school books which dealt with the Middle Ages in the school I went to described the whole war in terms of the fortunes of the English, for example. The second volume, Trial By Fire, did get a bit bogged down in the tedious details of the small scale but viciously destructive fighting of the "routiers", mercenary captains who doubled as bandits: the activities of almost any single one are representative of the group as a whole. Here, the nature of the war in these decades means that the focus is more on the courtly politics in Paris and London (with side glances to the important centres of the other states involved), and this makes it more interesting to read.

The Hundred Years War was a pivotal period in the history of Western Europe, being highly influential in the development of the early modern states of England and France in particular. In this thirty year period, the change which is most noticeable is the way that the military fitted into the rest of society, a change important enough to receive a special overview chapter interrupting the main narrative thread. On the one hand there were technological changes following the introduction of gunpowder to warfare which would lead to the evolution of new strategy and tactics (eventually making both the castle and armoured knight obsolete in their fourteenth century form and function). The other development was the rise of the man at arms, who became a part of a class of professional soldiers as opposed to the former knights fighting from feudal obligation and often had quite humble origins (to the extent that it was not infrequent for nobles to refuse to be commanded by even the most famous, men like Chandos and Knollys).

Apart from the broad sweep of the development of medieval warfare, the main theme I saw in Divided Houses was just how difficult war was for medieval states, even though it was an exceptionally aggressive militaristic society, where warfare was glorified as the main occupation of most gently born men. Problems with finance, communications, logistics, and (often) poor generalship all made military success that much harder to achieve. When individuals trained in fighting from almost as soon as they could walk perform so badly, it is fairly clear that something is wrong with the training; my guess is that the emphasis was more on individual prowess in skills such as horse riding and hand to hand combat and honourable conduct than on more menial aspects of warfare such as strategy and logistics (itself admittedly made really difficult by the lack of transport infrastructure). And yet, if you can't get close enough to the enemy to engage them, the personal skills are pretty much useless.


Divided Houses details such débâcles as assembling an army to cross the Channel, only to fail to bring together enough ships to transport them before the period the soldiers were contracted for ran out. Armies were dispatched to meet an enemy force which was somewhere else - often a problem caused by the weeks it could take for accurate news of the current situation to travel between France and England. Campaign lengths were drastically underestimated, with the result that many soldiers had no pay after the first installment; a recipe for rebellion and pillage of local communities (sometimes even supposedly friendly ones). It was hardly surprising that it became harder and harder for the English kings in particular to persuade Parliament to grant the special taxes needed to fund a campaign. (It was easier in France, because most of the fighting happened there, which was a huge persuasive force in itself.) Of course, military incompetence is not restricted to any one period, and some wars (the First World War, or the Crimean War, for example) are notorious for it. So maybe the nobles of the fourteenth century were not surprisingly bad at warfare...

Another excellent volume in what must be among the largest medieval history projects ever undertaken. Another two or three volumes to go - but hopefully not another twenty years! My rating: 9/10.


Edition: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011
Review number: 1437

Sylvian Hamilton: The Bone Pedlar (2000)

Edition: Orion, 2001
Review number: 1284

Any novel which begins with a sentence as eye catching, absurd and grotesque as "In the crypt of the Abbey Church at Hallowdene, the monks were boiling their bishop" deserves to be read. It's also hard to live up to, and The Bone Pedlar doesn't quite manage it despite being consistently interesting to read.

Most people probably know something about the background to The Bone Pedlar, which is one of the more disreputable yet strangely fascinating aspects of the medieval church, the trade in supposed body parts of the saints as relics (or if they don't, they will certainly have heard of the most famous surviving example, the Turin Shroud). Because of the reverence paid to them and the miracles associated with them, they were focal points for pilgrimages and brought vast sums to the churches and abbeys which owned the best ones. If you think we have moved on from this, just think about how we treat Elvis and Beatles memorabilia.

The story concerns a knight in the England of King John who has become rich by acting as a dealer in relics. (There seem to be rather too many nobles who work for a living in this novel considering the period, a time when knighthood still remained quite closely connected to landownership and military service.) Sir Richard Straccan obtains a relic of the apostle St Thomas for a client, but when the fingerbone is stolen, his daughter is kidnapped as an incentive for Straccan to find and retrieve it. The Bone Pedlar is basically a medieval thriller with a bit of horror thrown in, and as such it works quite well.

One major criticism, however, of The Bone Pedlar is that its medieval background lacks versimilitude. The society depicted is too classless, and there is too little distrust of travellers and outsiders (a common defect in the portrayal of the period). At least there is a generally quite high level of piety. This is of course not meant to be a novel containing a detailed picture of medieval life, but all too often the narrative seems only vaguely rooted in period, a serious problem in a historical novel. If not taken too seriously, though, The Bone Pedlar is a fun and enjoyable thriller with a great opening.

Jonathan Sumption: Trial by Fire (The Hundred Years War II) (1999)

Edition: Faber & Faber, 2001
Review number: 1071

The second volume of Sumption's enormous history of the Hundred Years' War covers the period between the aftermath of Crécy and that of Nájera, just under twenty five years - basically the reign of John II of France. The first part up until the treaty of Brétigny marks one of the lowest points in France's fortunes in the whole war, with the country unable to do anything about the destructive raids of the routier companies, holding towns and villages to ransome, encouraged yet not controlled by the English; the after effects of the Black Death; the battle of Poitiers, with the capture of the French king and many high ranking nobles; revolution in Paris and other northern cities; and effective civil war between different members of the Valois dynasty.

The major cause of the French problems dates back all the way to the weakness of the late Carolingian kings. This led to power becoming diffused among the provincial nobility, causing cultural fragmentation and political disunity symbolised by the Angevin empire, where Henry II ruled more of France than the French kings. The major aim of the Capetian and then Valois monarchy over centuries was to centralise power into their own hands, but even in the fourteenth century this was far from being realised. Although France was much richer than England, collecting taxes was so difficult that much of this period saw the crown in financial crisis. Different communities tended to refuse to pay taxes, and even when they did often put unwelcome conditions on the money raised, such as reserving it for operations within their specific area (with the result that the most hard hit areas were unable to pay for defence and the others were unwilling). Rulers who had a high level of personal prestige were more easily able to persuade the different areas of France to grant them money, but continual defeat and perceptions that the money was used to enrich favourites reduced the reputations of the Valois monarchs almost to nothing.

Militarily, the English had the advantage of better generalship (Dagworth, Lancaster, Chandos, Knolles and the Black Prince all outclassed the French regularly), but they lacked the resources to hold on to their gains. Once the French managed to reform their finances - bringing in the franc in 1360 and setting up a new tax system to end decades where the main source of the crown's income had been unpopular manipulation of the silver content of the currency - the end of this phase of the war became inevitable. They still had to make concessions, the English holdings in Gascony being extended and gains in the area around Calais being confirmed, but the treaty of Brétigny and the accession of Charles V marked something of a new beginning.

The story of these turbulent decades is ably told by Sumption, the details he gives (principally drawing on French archives) helping to make the whole course of events much clearer. The history is truly a great (if old fashioned) achievement, and it is to be hoped that Sumption manages to bring the whole thing to completion in as accomplished a manner.

Michael Jecks: The Boy-Bishop's Glovemaker (2000)

Edition: Headline, 2000
Review number: 1045

I found this novel from Jecks' Simon Puttock series more difficult to get into than most of them; it doesn't seem to flow quite so easily. The setting is rather different, being the city of Exeter rather than the wilds of medieval Dartmoor, and this may have something to do with it.

The novel is a Christmas mystery, revolving around one of the quainter customs of the time. In what may well have been a descendant of the Roman Saturnalia festival, it was the practice in many cathedrals to elect one of the boy choristers as a pseudo bishop for the day just after Christmas; this (the Feast of the Innocents) was traditionally a day of riotous and boisterous misbehaviour. In Exeter, this celebration also included a gift of gloves by the cathedral to nominees of the bishop (the real bishop), and Baldwin and his friend Simon Puttock are both to be honoured. However, when they (fairly reluctantly) arrive in Exeter they are asked to help in the investigations into a murder in the cathedral close, and begin to see connections with other recent killings in the town, including that of the glover commissioned to make the ornate bejewelled gloves for the presentation.

Perhaps I was just not really in the mood for this kind of mystery. I don't think that The Boy-Bishop's Glovemaker is poorer than the rest of the series and I did at least become interested in the puzzle by the middle of the novel. One to try reading again in a couple of years.

Robert Louis Stevenson: The Black Arrow

Edition: Eveleigh, Nash & Grayson, 1951 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 1027

This medieval romance is one of Stevenson's minor adventure stories. Its main character is naive young noble Richard Shenton, who discovers that his guardian is in fact an evil man who murdered Richard's father and who looks to become wealthy by continually swapping sides in the Wars of the Roses. (The point of the guardianship is this. When a noble heir was orphaned, his revenues until he came of age were in the hands of his liege lord, or such guardian as he appointed; moreover, the guardian was also frequently granted the tax payable on coming of age or marriage. These rights were the subject of lucrative trade in medieval England, and were one of the crown's major sources of income.)

To a modern reader, the main obstacle in The Black Arrow and the major reason it is less well known than, say, Treasure Island, is the flowery pseudo-medieval language used in the dialogue. This is something that has gradually been toned down in historical novels during the twentieth century, until now they are usually written with characters who speak more or less colloquial modern English. This is due to a change in philosophy; it is now considered better to accessibly reproduce what it felt like to be alive at the time the novel is set than to attempt to literally recreate it, and a modern reader will react differently to the kind of language used here from the way their medieval counterpart would have done to hearing it spoken. (And, of course, there was more regional and class based differentiation between individuals when people travelled less widely; this would be extremely difficult to duplicate, even for an expert in dialect development. Writers like Scott, Morris, Stevenson and so on didn't attempt to do this, and gave their characters dialogue based on a romanticised version of the formal speeches in medieval poetry - at least as inauthentic as modern usage.)

One of the merits of Stevenson's writing is the imperfection of his heroes. They tend to be - as Shelton is here - naive, not too bright, but with a strong moral sense; this makes them more interesting than the characters of many of the other writers of what might be termed proto-thrillers. Interestingly, when first published in serial form, The Black Arrow was more successful than Treasure Island had been; this ordering has since been reversed to leave the earlier novel as one of the classics of English popular fiction with The Black Arrow as just another novel by the same writer.

Jonathan Sumption: The Hundred Years War: Trial by Battle (1990)

Edition: Faber & Faber, 1990 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 820

In England, the Hundred Years' War is chiefly remembered for the victories of Crecy and particularly Agincourt. There was a great deal more to the war - or, more properly speaking, series of wars - and it had important consequences for the development of both the French and English states, and on the conception of these states by their inhabitants (as immortalised by Shakespeare, Agincourt was still used in Second World War propaganda).

Sumption's history of the war, of which this is the first volume, is an old fashined narrative history, if more concerned with matters like finance than earlier or more sketchy descriptions. It assumes a fair amount of knowledge of the generality of medieval history, and concentrates instead on a detailed study of the causes of the war and its earliest phase (this volume, about six hundred pages, only covers the admittedly complex events of the period 1328-1347, along with the background which sets the scene).

The major thing which comes across from this particular book is just how difficult medieval administration was. Lack of information meant that governments had little idea what could be afforded by their countries; poor communications made it difficult to gather troops; tax systems in their infancy made it difficult to collect money, especially when military defeat provoked opposition; and France in particular was an extremely complex collection of smaller communities, each with different traditions, laws and privileges (far greater unity was one of the eventual effects of the war), making it impossibly to impose any taxes or conscript armies with any degree of uniformity across the nation.

These difficulties explain why gains and losses in this stage of the war tended to be impermanent; each side could take territory when they could spend money in one place, but this would quickly be lost when the money ran out. Magnates changed sides when their expenses went unpaid, and soldiers and sailors frequently refused to fight unless their own homes were in danger.

This is an excellent history, with the same feeling for the Middle Ages shown by Sumption's portrait of the church, Pilgrimage. A must for anyone interested in the period.

Paul Doherty: The Treason of the Ghosts (2000)

Edition: Headline, 2000
Review number: 806

The medieval town of Melford is a dangerous place for young women. A serial killer is stalking the lanes around the town, which has grown quickly from a village after local farming has changed to the profitable business of sheep rearing. When local magnate Sir Robert Champelys is hanged, found guilty of the killings, they stop. However, questions are raised after his conviction - the jury included several men he had cuckolded, and there seemed to be irregularities in some of the evidence. Sir Robert's son petitioned the king for an investigation and maybe a pardon, and when the killings start up again the king's clerk Sir Hugh Corbett is sent to Melford to find out the truth.

In many ways The Treason of the Ghosts is not quite typical of the series of novels in which Corbett is the detective. It is as meticulously researched as ever, but the fact that there is more plot than usual (with a large number of murders requiring simultaneous investigation) leaves less room for the evocation of background which is one of the principal merits of the series. Like many of Doherty's novels, particularly those written as Paul Harding, this one contains a locked room mystery, but it is only perfunctory and easily solved in a few pages. It is in fact quite easy to work out who the murderer is, with Corbett ignoring some very obvious leads. The poorer plot and lack of background make The Treason of the Ghosts one of the least successful novels in the series.

Rafael Sabatini: Bellarion (1926)

Edition: Hutchinson & Co, 1928 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 743

By modern standards, Sabatini's prose is rather florid, but it is ideally suited to this tale of early fifteenth century Italian politics. It was a larger than life time, with swaggering condottieri, Machiavellian plotting, and high stakes in politics and war; and Sabatini portrays it atmospherically.

Bellarion, his hero, is a young man of extremely poor origins brought up in a monastery. After naively falling in with a false friar on a journey to Pavia, he becomes a fugitive in the principality of Montferrat, and then by chance involves himself in the complicated affairs of its ruling family. By showing himself a master of political manoeuvre, he begins a rise to power, eventually commanding his own army of mercenaries.

The big problem with Bellarion, once the reader is used to the style, is the central character. He is too good to be true, constantly able to outguess all those around him. His only flaw, in terms of the attitudes of his time, is a lack of any desire to excel personally as a leader; though not lacking in courage, he knows that his physical prowess in the field of battle is low, and is unwilling to expose himself to danger unnecessarily. Sabatini's heroes do tend to succeed through use of their brains rather than through their bodies; he consistently supports the intellectual over the physical.

Dorothy Dunnett: Gemini (2000)

Edition: Michael Joseph, 2000
Review number: 710

I found the final novel of the House of Niccolo series almost as disappointing as the one which preceded it, Caprice and Rondo. The series comes to a climax with the fifth novel, To Lie With Lions, in which the identity of the secret partner in the Vatachino trading house whose rivalry is attempting to destroy that of Niccolo is revealed. This is surprising and almost crushing; the last two novels of the series amount to around 1500 pages trying to wrench the situation round to a happy ending. Both contain new hidden enemies, but the revelations about them are not as well prepared and the repetition of the same plot ceases to be interesting, and becomes more far fetched - surely there must be a limit to the number of secrets related to Niccolo's origins.

The story this time takes place in Scotland, scene of some of Niccolo's earlier adventures. This location is necessary for the promised connection to Dunnett's Lymond series. Niccolo becomes involved in the complicated Scottish politics of the 1480s, born of the crisis caused by the incapacity of the Stewart royal family. Basically, King James III and his younger brother both have personalities in which there are strong elements of stupidity, vanity and bad temper, and difficulties between them are fertile ground for exploitation by the old enemy of England. Niccolo is still also involved in a vendetta with the St Pols of Kilmurren and another old enemy, David Salmeton, is now based in Scotland, making the already dangerous situation personally antagonistic to Niccolo.

The series draws to a disappointing end; a pity, when its first five novels are so good. Gemini is also likely to be Dunnett's final novel, and it is even given a literary introduction, as though she were already dead. The Lymond and Niccolo series will ensure that she is remembered, but not this novel itself.

Peter Tremayne: Act of Mercy (1999)

Edition: Headline, 2000
Review number: 703

The seventh Sister Fidelma mystery is to be the last, as far as I am concerned. I had hoped that with the setting moved away from Ireland the novel would be an improvement on the previous couple in the series, which had got into something of a rut. It is better, but not sufficiently so for me to continue with the series.

Fidelma sets sail for Santiago on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St James. This was not the massively important place it would become in the later Middle Ages, after a vision had revealed the presence of the body of the saint, but there are apparently records of Irish pilgrims travelling there at the date when the series is set. (This is mentioned in the rather defensive foreword.) However, one of her fellow travellers goes overboard during a storm, and evidence comes to light to show that this was murder.

Characterisation is sketchy; the background is far too clean. (Tremayne's picture of seventh century Ireland seems to have been strongly influenced by the romanticised picture of Celtic history fashionable in the late nineteenth century as part of the Celtic Revival.) Act of Mercy is poorly written and the mystery is unconvincing.

Paul Harding: The Assassin's Riddle (1996)

Edition: Headline, 1996
Review number: 670

There are two mysteries in this novel from Harding's medieval crime series, one a locked room puzzle, a genre which has already cropped up several times in the Sorrowful Mysteries of Brother Athelstan, and the other a serial killer who leaves riddles with the bodies of the victims. The first puzzle is the death of rich banker Bartholemew Drayton, who is found killed by a crossbow bolt in his strongroom, locked on the inside. The pressure is on Sir John Cranston, Coroner of the City of London, and his friend, the friar Athelstan, to swiftly discover the killer, particularly are five thousand pounds of silver is missing, instead of enriching the regent, John of Gaunt. The other is the murder, one by one, of the clerks working in a particular office in Chancery (which ran much of the bureaucratic administration of medieval England). The riddles left on their bodies are not in fact too difficult to work out (though they use some dubious linguistic trickery which I suspect depends on aspects of the English language which are anachronistic), and neither is the identity of the killer. The locked room is a much harder puzzle.

Having two mysteries means that the novel has to concentrate on them, rather than on the background of late fourteenth century London. Mind you, most of the readers of The Assassin's Riddle will probably already have read earlier novels in the series, so this doesn't matter as much as it might do.

Michael Jecks: Squire Throwleigh's Heir (1999)

Edition: Headline, 1999
Review number: 662

One of the poorest entries in Jecks' generally excellent series of medieval mysteries, Squire Throwleigh's Heir never really catches the attention. The problems start with the title, which while genuinely possible in the fourteenth century with the meaning it carries - landowner instead of apprentice knight - tends to suggest an eighteenth or nineteenth century setting (the usage, with the title followed by the surname, also suggests this). The introduction, the most interesting part of the novel, actually talks about this type of problem, as Jecks defends writing in modern English and points out that some of the words correspondents have objected to (such as "posse") are genuinely in period but have anachronistic connotations to the modern reader.

The murder in this novel is of a six year old boy, heir to the manor of Throwleigh, a few weeks after the death of his father. This event provokes an emotional reaction in both the sleuths of the series, as Simon Puttock lost his beloved son at about that age, and Baldwin Furnshill has just got married and is thinking of his own future family. However, the investigation comes over as rather mechanical, the emotional parts of the prose reading, unconvincingly, as though they have been tacked on later. (It is even sometimes difficult to work out which feelings are being attributed to which character.) Though the solution to the mystery makes sense, the way it is set up is very artificial, the number of people who have secret reasons for being near the scene of the crime assuming farcical proportions.

None of the non-series characters are particularly sympathetic, and the most interesting is so only because of his occupation. He is a man at arms, but an expert in all the different forms of medieval combat, a trainer who is rather like an Eastern martial arts teacher. Such men did exist and were much in demand as bodyguards, despite the modern picture of medieval fighting as a crude matter of strength alone. (The quarterstaff and longbow, both English specialities, were weapons demanding great skill.)

It seems strange that such an excellent series contains a novel as poor as this one, but that is partly because of raised expectations. By comparison to some of the other writers who have stepped into the historical crime novel market after the medieval mystery was popularised by Ellis Peters, Jecks is still one of the best, creating one of the strongest backgrounds of all of them.

Michael Jecks: Belladonna at Belstone (1999)

Edition: Headline, 1999
Review number: 637

In this series, Michael Jecks has certainly been keen to show readers some of the negative aspects of medieval institutions; we've had a leper hospital, now it's a convent where lax morality is accompanied by poverty. Not all monastic establishments were hugely rich, though that is the obvious impression to be gained from what has survived - the huge scale of ruins like St Augustine's Priory, Canterbury, Thetford Priory, Fountains and Rievaulx Abbeys make it obvious what the financial reasons were which prompted the Dissolution. The establishments which have left no trace were generally far more modest, particularly convents of nuns. (Rich benefactors tended to endow establishments of men, for women would be unable to perform masses for their souls.) Belstone, a fictional abbey in a real Devonshire setting, is a place like this, a collection of dilapidated buildings upon bleak moorland.

Belstone in fact has more immediately serious problems than its poverty. The prioress, noblewoman Lady Elizabeth, and treasurer Margherita are at loggerheads and Margherita is embezzling from the priory. There are rumours of lax moral behaviour - nuns wantonly sleeping with the men who work the priory's lands and even the priest who conducts their services - which have some basis in fact. (This kind of gossip often surrounded communities of nuns, as is clear from the stories in Boccaccio's Decameron.) Then one of the novices is killed, and Margherita writes a letter to the Bishop of Exeter accusing Lady Elizabeth of murder. This prompts an investigation involving the detective partners who are the central characters of Jecks' series, Baldwin Furnshill and Simon Puttock.

The combination of the various abuses going on in Belstone priory is perhaps a little unlikely, and Jecks is a good enough writer to add some background to motivate it. In fact, Belladonna at Belstone is a very competently constructed novel. With as truly a medieval background as the rest of the series, it keeps up the high standard.

Paul Doherty: The Devil's Domain (1998)

Edition: Headline, 1998
Review number: 541

The Sorrowful Mysteries of Brother Athelstan now join Paul Doherty's other successful historical novels in being published under that name rather than the Paul Harding pseudonym. Eighth in the series, The Devil's Domain is typical, with the background of 1390s London fearful because of the growing unrest that would eventually lead to the Peasant's Revolt. Though this background is constantly part of the novel (and, indeed, the series), the more immediate cause of the mystery to be investigated by John Cranston, Coroner of the City of London, and his friend brother Athelstan, is the ongoing wars with France (later lumped together by historians as the Hundred Years' War).

A group of French prisoners has been housed in Hawkmere Manor, now Cripplegate, during a truce while their ransoms are negotiated and paid. However, one of them dies mysteriously, poisoned in a locked room even though the prisoners have agreed only to eat food they have shared, fearing an attack of this kind.

The plot is ingenious (though fairly specialist knowledge would be needed to work it out ahead of brother Athelstan). The background is, as always in Doherty's medieval novels, detailed and convincing (and not as sanitised as that presented by, say, Ellis Peters). Whatever author's name they appear under, the series continues to be worth reading.

Richard Zimler: The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon (1998)

Edition: Arcadia, 1998
Review number: 461

In the early sixteenth century, Portugal was an extremely bad place to be a Jew. Enforced conversion a few years earlier had not reduced the level of persecution of New Christians, as they were now called. Instead, the Inquisition, active in Portugal in the same way as more famously in Spain, continually looked for evidence that Jewish religious practices were continuing. Then, famine in Lisbon sparked off riots, and hundreds of New Christians were killed in the belief that a Jewish sorcerer had caused the failure of the harvest.

This is the background against which Zimler's novel is set. Its protagonist, the teenage Berekiah Zarco, is apprenticed to his Jewish kabbalist book smuggler uncle. He finds the body of his uncle during the riot, yet it is soon clear that his death is not caused by the Old Christians: not only is he in the secret room in his home used as a refuge and a place to secretly carry out rituals, but his throat has been cut in the manner of a shohet, or kosher butcher. Berekiah has to investigate in the extremely dangerous atmosphere of Lisbon after the riot.

The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon must inevitably be compared with The Name of the Rose, as is done by the reviews quoted on the back cover. Both are medieval mystery stories with a literary twist. The comparison is reasonable, and shows that the standard against which Zimler's novel should be judged is high. However, The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon is nothing like as intellectual as Eco's writing, and the background is far less convincing. This is partly because of small factual errors - for example using a simile about a theatre building well before they reappeared in Europe - and the illiterate copy editing - "you're" for "your", "ascent" for "assent". These are only minor if irritating details, but the book as a whole is not able to hold the interest as well as Eco's. The terrible persecution which forms the background is made too impersonal; this is probably to make it possible for a detective story to take place in the foreground. The main use of the background is to give a reason why so many potential witnesses and suspects are missing or dead, and this trivialises the suffering of these people.

Peter Tremayne: The Monk Who Vanished (1999)

Edition: Headline, 1999
Review number: 440

The latest Sister Fidelma mystery shows no real signs of improvement, having the same plot once again. This time the threat to her brother Colgu's throne is an all out assassination attempt in his capital at Cashel rather than a dark plot in the corners of the kingdom of Muman (better known by its Viking name of Munster). There are distinct signs of cheating, as when Fidelma looks at a sword and says that its use of animal teeth is a speciality of the art of one of the Irish kingdoms but she can't remember which one. Surely that's not the way that people remember things; she might more plausibly realise that there's something special about the sword but not be sure what it is.

All the real interest, all the character development, comes in the epilogue; at last something changes in her relationship with the Saxon Eadwulf; at last she might leave Muman and go somewhere new. But none of this is prepared; it all comes as a surprise. Thus, the next Sister Fidelma novel might be worth reading, but if it isn't I'll finally give up on the series.

William Morris: The Wood Beyond the World (1894)

Edition: Oxford University Press, 1980
Review number: 404

The earliest of Morris' fantasy stories, The Wood Beyond the World is short and simply told, in the style derived from medieval romance that is his trademark. The story is one which emphasises the psychological world at the expense of the plot, and has the curious feature of an ending which seems to forget about the beginning.

Driven from his home by an unhappy marriage, Walter Goldn is haunted by a recurring vision of a lady, an attendant maid wearing the iron ring of thralldom on her thigh, and a hideous dwarf. Attempting to return home for revenge when he hears news that his father has been killed by his wife's relatives, his ship is blown off course to a deserted region. He makes his way into a primeval forest, the wood beyond the world, where he meets the people from his vision.

It is easy to see Freudian ideas at work in this book, particularly in the scenes with the lady in the wood, hunting dangerous animals together, stalked by the dwarf. (As in many medieval authors including Thomas Malory and Chretien de Troyes, the dwarf stands for impurity and evil.) Yet Morris was writing before Freud's theories about dreams were published, and his images will have come from his medieval sources and his own imagination. They are still disturbing, particularly with the strange resolution in which Walter forgets his revenge totally, being crowned the king of an entirely different nation.