Illustrated Medieval scene from the Romance of Lancelot

Medieval

Historical recipeFake fish – a medieval apple pie for Lent

Windows on to history

Windows: an illuminating history

Alfred the Great (849–899). (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Who was King Alfred the Great?

QuizWeird and wonderful history

How did pasta come to Europe and when did it first become established in Italy?

Medieval ghost stories

Jodie Comer plays Marguerite de Carrouges in the upcoming film 'The Last Duel',

“A spotlight on historic societal misogyny and disbelief of women”: what The Last Duel gets right and wrong

A depiction of folk figure Dick Whittington

Dick Whittington, the Loch Ness Monster and a talking mongoose: 8 mythical figures of British history

An illustration from The Travels of Marco Polo, showing a teenage Marco on the deck of a ship sailing away from Venice

Why are Marco Polo's travels so famous?

Trial by combat: the real history behind The Last Duel

A 14th-century illustration shows two bishops watching men fight to the death in a trial by combat.

Medieval trial by combat: the real history behind The Last Duel

A medieval miniature depicts a monk and a woman in a bed.

Sex in the Middle Ages: have attitudes really changed?

The fabled ‘Vegetable Lamb of Tartary’ was a plant said to grow sheep as its fruit.

Q&AWhat was the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary?

At home with the Mongols

Plagues of our past

Illustration of a man without a head, but with his face on his chest. This is one of many creatures Sir John Mandeville claimed to have met on his travels

A knight's (tall) tale: why medieval traveller Sir John Mandeville was more popular than Marco Polo

The Bal des Ardents (the 'Ball of the Burning Men'), from 'The Chronicler of European Chivalry' by GG Coulton (London, 1930). The 1393 tragedy claimed the lives of four people. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Q&AWhat was the ‘Ball of the Burning Men’?

Jodie Comer plays Marguerite de Carrouges in the upcoming film 'The Last Duel',

The medieval women who spoke out against sexual violence

A portrait of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York

Like father, like son: Richard Plantagenet and Richard III

Dev Patel stars as Sir Gawain in The Green Knight an adaptation of the Arthurian romance Sir Gawain and The Green Knight

“An intoxicating triumph true to the grandeur of the poem”: a historian’s review of The Green Knight

John of Gaunt: prince without a throne

The burgundy cover of a British passport

Q&AWhen were passports as we know them today first introduced?

John of Gaunt shown in a c16th-century portrait

John of Gaunt: The man who would be king

Matthew Stevens tackles listener questions on the history of the Welsh regions during the Middle Ages

Medieval Wales: everything you wanted to know

Historian Dennis Duncan guides us through singular stories from the history of the book index

A surprising history of the index

Tostig Godwinson, brother of King Harold II of England, and King Harald Hardrada of Norway receive the submission of the city of York

Hastings, Stamford Bridge and Gate Fulford: three battles that lost England

Dr Benjamin Pohl explores the role of monks and abbots in the Middle Ages, and asks: why did they write histories?

Why did medieval monks write histories?

The Green Knight shows his severed – and still talking – head to King Arthur in this illustration of the beginning of the 14th century legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: what’s the story?

Perceval meets the Fisher King in an illustration for Chrétien de Troyes’ 12th-century Perceval, The Story of the Grail

How to write a medieval romance