A feast for history lovers--the whole colorful parade of English history brilliantly captured in a single volume. From ancient times to the present day, the story of England has been laced with drama, intrigue, courage, and passion. In GREAT TALES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY, Robert Lacey recounts the remarkable episodes that shaped a nation as only a great storyteller can: by combining impeccable accuracy with the timeless drama that has made these tales live for centuries. This new paperback edition is encyclopedic in scope, gathering together all of Robert Lacey's great tales previously published in three separate hardcover volumes. The book comprises 154 delectable stories, each brimming with insight, humor, and fascinating detail. Bite-sized history at its best, GREAT TALES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY belongs on every Anglophile's bookshelf. "An informative, trustworthy distillation, less a debunking than an entertaining, wryly lucid reconstruction of the facts. . . . The tales weave a narrative as finely thatched as an English cottage." -Tennessean "Eminently readable, highly enjoyable. . . GREAT TALES should appeal to the reader who appreciates individuals and their personalities more than mere mass movements." -St. Louis Post-Dispatch "Beautifully written, full of things you didn't know, and well worth a read if you want a new view on stories you thought you'd already understood." -Living History

With insight, humor and fascinating detail, Lacey brings brilliantly to life the stories that made England -- from Ethelred the Unready to Richard the Lionheart, the Venerable Bede to Piers the Ploughman. The greatest historians are vivid storytellers, Robert Lacey reminds us, and in Great Tales from English History, he proves his place among them, illuminating in unforgettable detail the characters and events that shaped a nation. In this volume, Lacey limns the most important period in England's past, highlighting the spread of the English language, the rejection of both a religion and a traditional view of kingly authority, and an unstoppable movement toward intellectual and political freedom from 1387 to 1689. Opening with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and culminating in William and Mary's "Glorious Revolution," Lacey revisits some of the truly classic stories of English history: the Battle of Agincourt, where Henry V's skilled archers defeated a French army three times as large; the tragic tale of the two young princes locked in the Tower of London (and almost certainly murdered) by their usurping uncle, Richard III; Henry VIII's schismatic divorce, not just from his wife but from the authority of the Catholic Church; "Bloody Mary" and the burning of religious dissidents; Sir Francis Drake's dramatic, if questionable, part in the defeat of the Spanish Armada; and the terrible and transformative Great Fire of London, to name but a few. Here Anglophiles will find their favorite English kings and queens, villains and victims, authors and architects - from Richard II to Anne Boleyn, the Virgin Queen to Oliver Cromwell, Samuel Pepys to Christopher Wren, and many more. Continuing the "eminently readable, highly enjoyable" (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) history he began in volume I of Great Tales from English History, Robert Lacey has drawn on the most up-to-date research to present a taut and riveting narrative, breathing life into the most pivotal characters and exciting landmarks in England's history.

From ancient times to the present day, the story of England has been laced with drama, intrigue, courage and passion - a rich and vibrant narrative of heroes and villains, kings and rebels, artists and highwaymen, bishops and scientists. Now, in Great Tales of English History, Robert Lacey captures one hundred of the most pivotal moments: the stories and extraordinary characters who helped shape a nation. This first volume begins in 7150 BC with the life and death of Cheddar Man and ends in 1381with Wat Tyler and the Peasants' Revolt. We meet the Greek navigator Pytheus, whose description of the Celts as prettanike (the 'painted people') yielded the Latin word Britannici. We witness the Roman victory celebrations of AD 43, where a squadron of elephants were paraded through Colchester. And we visit the New Forest, in 1100, and the mysterious shooting of King William Rufus. Packed with insight, humour and fascinating detail, Robert Lacey brings the stories that made England brilliantly to life. From Ethelred the Unready to Richard the Lionheart, the Venerable Bede to the Black Prince, this is, quite simply, history as history should be told.

The history of the Old West has deep roots in South Texas where the Wild Horse Desert was a lawless land controlled by no authority. The western region of South Texas, from San Antonio to Corpus Christi, stretching west and south to the Rio Grande, was the birthplace of the big cattle ranches, the cattle barons, rustlers, hide thieves, outlaws, and bad men operating on both sides of the border. Murphy Givens brings the stories of the Old West to life in "Great Tales From the History of South Texas"

Named a Book of the Year by the Daily Telegraph, Times Literary Supplement, The Times, Spectator, and The Economist The English first materialized as an idea, before they had a common ruler and before the country they lived in even had a name. From the armed Saxon bands that descended onto Roman-controlled Britain in the fifth century to the travails of the Eurozone plaguing the prime-ministership of today's multicultural England, acclaimed historian Robert Tombs presents a momentous and challenging history of a people who have a claim to be the oldest nation in existence. Drawing on a wealth of recent scholarship, Tombs sheds light on the strength and resilience of English governance, the deep patterns of division among the people who have populated the British Isles, the persistent capacity of the English to come together in the face of danger, and not the least the ways the English have understood their own history, have argued about it, forgotten it and yet been shaped by it. Momentous and definitive, The English and Their History is the first single-volume work on this scale for more than half a century.

A stunning collection of English folklore featuring stories of beasts, giants, ghosts, saints, and the Devil, as well as moral tales and tales of origins. Master storyteller, social historian, and folklorist Sybil Marshall scoured English history to bring together a fascinating collection of folk tales in one glorious edition. Out-of-print for over thirty years, Overlook is re-issuing this bewitching book to enchant a new audience. From the great mass of folk tales that exists, Sybil Marshall has chosen a wide variety of stories, retelling them with wit and suspense. We have her tales of the little people and of giants, of the Devil and the saints, and supernatural and moral tales. Let Sybil Marshall lead you through the old English countryside, exploring the beliefs and legends of time gone by. This beautiful edition, complete with wood engraved illustrations by John Lawrence, will entertain, educate, and ensnare audiences of all ages. “A compilation of vivid, sometimes fearsome stories . . . The England we visit here has no afternoon teas or jolly rounds of cricket on lovely green lawns. In these pages, the sophisticated reader steps onto older, darker soil half-soaked in blood, superstition, and magic. . . . Wood engravings by John Lawrence deepen our sense of the blackened accretion of centuries in this fascinating collection.” —Meghan Cox Gurdon, The Wall Street Journal

THE YEAR 1000 is a vivid evocation of how English people lived a thousand years ago - no spinach, sugar or Caesarean operations in which the mother had any chance of survival, but a world that knew brain surgeons, property developers and, yes, even the occasional gossip columnist. In the spirit of modern investigative journalism, Lacey and Danziger interviewed the leading historians and archaeologists in their field. In the year 1000 the changing seasons shaped a life that was, by our standards, both soothingly quiet and frighteningly hazardous - and if you survived, you could expect to grow to just about the same height and stature as anyone living today. This exuberant and informative book concludes as the shadow of the millennium descends across England and Christendom, with prophets of doom invoking the spectre of the Anti-Christ. Here comes the abacus - the medieval calculating machine - along with bewildering new concepts like infinity and zero. These are portents of the future, and THE YEAR 1000 finishes by examining the human and social ingredients that were to make for survival and success in the next thousand years.