Dan Jones and Richard Barber

Bestselling historians Dan Jones and Richard Barber discuss the approaches they took to writing about the history of the Middle Ages in their latest books.

Jones’s Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages is an epic story of how the world we know it today came to be built. Jones covers a thousand years from the sacking of Rome by the Barbarians in AD410 to the first contacts between the new and old worlds in the 16th century. Jones, a bestselling historian and a well-known broadcaster, argues three key themes underpinned the success of the west – commerce, conquest and Christianity.

Barber’s Magnificence and Princely Splendour in the Middle Ages looks at the idea of ‘magnificence’, a display of kingly grandeur expected of monarchs in the clothes they wore and in the courtiers, artists, musicians and architects they employed. Barber looks at the objects and occasions but also at the character of the kings and the servants, craftsmen, artists and musicians that contributed to this magnificence. Barber’s previous books include The Knight and Chivalry, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, and The Penguin Guide to Medieval Europe.