Pen & Sword Review: Life in Medieval Europe: Fact and Fiction, by Daniele Cybulskie

Have you ever found yourself watching a show or reading a novel and wondering what life was really like in the Middle Ages? What did people actually eat? Were they really filthy? And did they ever get to marry for love?

In Life in Medieval Europe: Fact and Fiction, you’ll find fast and fun answer to all your secret questions, from eating and drinking to sex and love. Find out whether people bathed, what they did when they got sick, and what actually happened to people accused of crimes. Learn about medieval table manners, tournaments, and toothpaste, and find out if people really did poop in the moat.

My Review

As a break from blog tours, I’ve been slowly making progress on my Pen & Sword collection. My current interest is the ‘Fact and Fiction’ books they publish, introductory texts to an era, profession or person that are a gateway to more in-depth study. Today’s choice is ‘Life in Medieval Europe’. The next will be ‘Richard the 3rd’, and after that ‘The English Civil War’.

I really quite enjoyed reading this book. At 120 pages, it isn’t in-depth, obviously, but it does take you through the essentials, from life, death, love, marriage, war, school, religion, bathing, clothes. Basically day to day life.

Cybulskie is a good writer, with an easy reading manner that makes the subject easy to understand and the pages fly by. It is divided into seven chapters with the chapters further divided into questions that cover specific areas. These questions are listed in the contents so if there’s something you need the answer to, you can just look for the correct chapter, then question and find the page. Very simple.

There’s a decent bibliography, notes and index so you can take your reading further if there’s a particular area of interest that takes your fancy when you’ve read the book.

Very nice introduction to the period. Highly recommended, possibly even as a text book.