A Companion to the Anglo-Norman World

The Pastons Pastons: A Family in the Wars of the Roses a Family in the Wars of the Roses

Attractive selection conveys well their recurrent concerns with land, money, civil violence, flirtation, marriage, and the purchase of ginger and lace. MEDIUM AEVUM Vivid first-hand accounts of life in England at the time ofthe Wars of the Roses, presented in their historical context. Essential reading on the English middle ages. Within three generations (1426 to 1485), and through the dark anddangerous years of the Wars of the Roses, the Pastons establishedthemselves as a family of consequence, both in their native Norfolk andwithin court circles. Ambitious and highly mobile - womenfolk as wellas men - they kept in touch by correspondence, usually but notinvariably through the medium of a clerk. These letters, a raresurvival, break upon us across the centuries with the urgency, andsometimes the violence, of their preoccupations: defending property, fighting court cases, making the right alliances, and, on the domesticside, managing their estates, conducting their courtships, stockingtheir cupboards. Selected and presented here with Richard Barber'sinvaluable linking narrative, they bring the middle ages triumphantlyto life.

Caroline Winterer

The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910

Winner of the New Scholars Book Award from the American Educational Research Association Debates continue to rage over whether American university students should be required to master a common core of knowledge. In The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910 , Caroline Winterer traces the emergence of the classical model that became standard in the American curriculum in the nineteenth century and now lies at the core of contemporary controversies. By closely examining university curricula and the writings of classical scholars, Winterer demonstrates how classics was transformed from a narrow, language-based subject to a broader study of civilization, persuasively arguing that we cannot understand both the rise of the American university and modern notions of selfhood and knowledge without an appreciation for the role of classicism in their creation.

Paul Preston (Author)

Architects of Terror: Paranoia, Conspiracy and Anti-Semitism in Franco's Spain

A TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR From the preeminent historian of 20th century Spain Paul Preston, Architects of Terror is a new history of how paranoia, conspiracy and anti-Semitism was used to justify the military coup of 1936 and enabled the construction of a dictatorship built on violence and persecution. It is the previously untold story of how antisemitic beliefs were weaponised to justify and propagate the Franco overthrow of liberal Spain.The Spanish military coup of 1936 was launched to overturn the social and economic reforms of the democratic Second Republic, and its educational and cultural challenges to the established order. The consequent civil war was fought in the interests of the landowners, industrialists, bankers, clerics and army officers whose privileges were threatened. However, a central justification for a war that took the lives of around 500,000 Spaniards was that it was being fought to combat an alleged scheme for world domination by a non-existent 'Jewish- Masonic-Bolshevik Conspiracy'. Despite the fact that Spain had only a tiny minority of Jews and Freemasons, Franco and his inner circle were ardent believers in this fabricated conspiracy and spread ...