The Middle Ages (c.500-1500) includes a thousand years of European history. In this Very Short Introduction Miri Rubin tells the story of the times through the

Late antiquity: decline or transformation, conflict or interaction? Late antiquity is the period (c.300 - c.800) in which barbarian invasions ended Roman Empire

First published as part of the best-selling The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, John Gillingham and Ralph A. Griffiths' Very Short Introduction to Mediev

There are many stories we can tell about the past, and we are not, perhaps, as free as we might imagine in our choice of which stories to tell, or where those s

Aristocracies or nobilities dominated the social, economic, and institutional history of all European counties until only a few generations ago. The relics of t