Berkhamsted Castle

Bloomsbury 2019

This is the first scholarly biography of Cecily Neville, duchess of York, the mother of Edward IV and Richard III. J. L. Laynesmith draws on a wealth of rarely considered sources to construct a fresh and revealing portrait of a remarkable woman, the only major protagonist to live right through the Wars of the Roses.

Winner of the 2018 Royal Studies Network Book Prize.

This fascinating selection of photographs traces some of the many ways in which Berkhamsted has changed and developed.

A fascinating and colourful account  of the Bayeux Tapestry by embroiderer and artist  Jan Messent.

A detailed study of the history and fabric of Berkhamsted Castle from Dacorum Heritage Trust, including a description of the castle remains with references to the early 20th-century archaeological excavations.

Mappae mundi (maps of the world), beautiful objects in themselves, offer huge insights into how medieval scholars conceived the world and their place within it. They are a fusion of “real” geographical locations with fantastical, geographic, historical, legendary and theological material. Their production reached its height in England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with such well-known examples as the Hereford map, the maps of Matthew Paris, and the Vercelli map.

This volume provides a comprehensive Companion to the seven most significant English mappae mundi, surveying the maps’ materials, types, shapes, sources, contents, and uses in the medieval world. It also explores the shared history of map and book making in Britain before and after the Norman Conquest.

A chapter is devoted to each individual map, including the Duchy of Cornwall Map Fragment and the Hereford Mappa Mundi.