The inglorious Twelfth

Most people know more about the 12th century than they think they do. This is, as Richard Huscroft reminds us in his lively new history, because it is a story often told. Stephen and Matilda. Thomas Becket’s murder. Richard the Lionheart. Bad King John and Magna Carta. These are the familiar friends of Sellar and Yeatman’s ‘guide to all the history you can remember’. Huscroft sets out to find a new way in to this history through its oft-forgotten supporting cast — the men and women caught up in the political eddies caused by the great — and gives us ten tales from an assortment of princesses, adventurers, clerics and exiles.

The long 12th century started in 1066 with the Battle of Hastings and ended with the death of King John in 1216. It was a time in which England and its Norman rulers survived a civil war, became the most powerful family in western Europe, and then lost it all.