Illustrated Medieval scene from the Romance of Lancelot

Medieval

The LibraryYe Olde Travel Guide: Mainz 1455.

The Siege of Antioch during the First Crusade, c1200. (Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Why Islam crushed the crusaders.

A statue of Joan of Arc in the home where she is thought to have been born, in Domrémy-La-Pucelle, eastern France. (PATRICK HERTZOG/AFP/Getty Images)

Where history happenedJoan of Arc.

Royston Cave, Hertfordshire

A portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer from an early 15th-century manuscript of the poem ‘De Regimine Principum’ by Thomas Hoccleve. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

The LibraryChaucer and the idea of Englishness.

A c15th-century vellum shows the Squire from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. For Adam Nicolson, the essence of the gentry was “government-through-networking”. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

Stories of the gentry.

The Tower of London. More than 30 inmates successfully broke out of the royal fortress between the 12th and 18th centuries. (Photo by Tetra Images/Getty Images)

How to escape from the Tower of London.

A portrait of King Edward III. By using his offspring as pawns in a series of alliances, the king hoped to wield power over a confederation of dependent states bound together by feudal and family ties. (Photo by VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images)

King Edward III: the family man.

Beaumaris Castle, Anglesey

A scene from the Chronique de St Denis depicting the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Louis VII of France, 1137. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

An A to Z of the Plantagenets.

Whitby Abbey, North Yorkshire

Queen Matilda.

Magna Carta

Roche Abbey, Yorkshire

Knights Templar: not guilty

Anne of Cleves House, East Sussex

Caerphilly Castle, Glamorgan

Clare Priory, Suffolk

1492: The Year Our World Began

Wars of the Roses

Pieces from the Lewis Chessmen, some of the earliest chessmen to survive.

In pictures: what are the Lewis Chessmen?

Conwy Castle, Conwy

Britain under Roman rule and the truth about the crusades.

A Saracen attack on Crusaders, from the French manuscript 'Chroniques de Saint Denis', c1200. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Traders and crusaders.

In 1830 a keeper at the Tower of London menagerie accidentally removed the barrier between a lion and two tigers. The animals were eventually prised apart, by which point the lion had been fatally wounded. (Photo by Guildhall Library & Art Gallery/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Life with the lions: the Tower of London menagerie.

St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury

Ye Olde Travel Guide: Samarkand 1404.

5 of the worst smells in medieval London

Ye olde travel guide: Acre AD 1272.

The fine rolls of King Henry III.