Company of Liars by Karen Maitland
Excellent tale of ordinary folk amongst the plague. No fixation upon the armed gentry here. Eerie and character driven. Negative points for clumsy use of anagrams though.
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| No knights in shining armour here |
Saxons and Danes for your Elleslandic games. The TV series as useful as the books if you can get over the shapes of the Saxon shields. The beliefs of the characters are what makes this important to me. Belief in a curse or the words of an oracle or sorcerer seems to change reality or the perception of it. The importance of the church is prominent here too. Plus there’s decent battles and drama and so forth.
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| Getting your shield wall on |
Excalibur
John Boorman’s very atmospheric film about the eponymous blade. We get a spot on depiction of the costs of sorcery here. Merlin pays a heavy price for the magics he employs in the service of the family Pendragon.
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| Being a knight, not all it’s cracked up to be. |
I'm definitely going to get around to Company of Liars in January. Another good novel with an unsentimental view of medieval life is Barry Unsworth's Morality Play.
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