author : Dorsey Armstrong

This is the course guidebook that accompanies the 24 lecture “Great Course” of the same name. It is essentially an abbreviated transcript of each 30 minute lecture, a few pictures, some suggested reading, and a few questions to think about. (I watched the lectures, which is what I am reviewing here, and am using the book simply as an aide-memoire.)

Armstrong covers the entirety of the Arthurian legends, from their possible historical origins, through the medieval beginnings, to the Victorian revival, onto the present day multi-media re-imaginings.

I now understand why I have known quite a lot of the stories, but was always a bit foggy on the overall way things fit together. They don’t. It’s essentially all made up, by multiple authors over several centuries and cultures, for a variety of political and artistic reasons, with little attention to continuity or worry about contradiction. Certain well known components, like the Grail, appear surprisingly late. Others, like Tristan and Isolde, have been grafted in from separate origins. All this means that Monty Python and the Holy Grail is just as much canon as is Le Morte Darthur or Idylls of the King.

This is the third set of Armstrong’s lectures I’ve watched, all equally fascinating and excellently presented. It turns out I have watched them in reverse order of publication (2022, then 2019, and here 2015). So I’ve watched Armstrong grow younger through time, a bit like Merlin in The Once and Future King, I suppose.

This is the course guidebook that accompanies the 24 lecture “Great Course” of the same name. It is essentially an abbreviated transcript of each 30 minute lecture, a few pictures, some suggested reading, and a few questions to think about. (I watched the lectures, which is what I am reviewing here, and am using the book simply as an aide-memoire.)

There were many momentous events happening around the world in and around 1215, from the signing of the Magna Carta in England, the pronouncements of the Fourth Lateran Council in Rome, the rise of the Mongols and the end of the Islamic Golden Age, the dominance of several large Sub-Saharan African empires, and the changes in empires in the Americas.

Armstrong is a Mediaeval European scholar, so much of the content covers Europe, or Europe-adjacent, issues. However, she does include material on Japan, ASia, Africa, and the Americas, to give a more global view too. Maybe it’s because of this focus on Europe, but the European Christians, from the Crusades to the Inquisition, do not come out of this period well.

Some of the events were caused by a locally beneficial climate change, warming Europe slightly, allowing better agriculture, leading to a population boom, and so increased pressure on land, and so increased attempts for those with land to hold on to it. Armstrong weaves together all the interlinked events and repercussions in a very engaging way (despite descriptions of several atrocities).

I wish history lessons in school had been this engaging and informative!

This is the course guidebook that accompanies the short 7 lecture “Great Course” of the same name. It is essentially an abbreviated transcript of each 30 minute lecture, a few pictures, some suggested reading, and a few questions to think about. (I watched the lectures, which is what I am reviewing here, and am using the book simply as an aide-memoire.)

This is an update of the earlier course on the Black Death, which I haven't seen. The aim is to present the latest research in the context of that course; however, it does stand alone well.

The main new things learned are the source of the plague: not China, but somewhere further west, where it spread outwards, reaching China and Europe at about the same time. There is also some fascinatingly gruesome accounts of rat behaviour, and why you don't need to worry about plague until all the rats have died: plague fleas much prefer rat hosts, and only transfer to humans when they are desperate. Also, there was essentially only one introduction of the plague to Europe; the continual flare-ups over the centuries were from the same source.

There were some interesting social perspectives, too. One is that the Black Death changed the world so much, reducing the population, giving labour more power, that the 100 Years War was mostly about giving the nobles something to do. But also, with so many people dying, and others left orphaned or otherwise destitute, led to the establishment of social welfare programmes throughout Europe: the survivors pulled together. Armstrong wonders, maybe the reason the US has such poor healthcare is that it didn't live through 400 years of plague?

The fact that this was recorded during the Covid pandemic led to some acid asides about how to deal with the spread of infections, and to some empathy for how Europeans felt not knowing when a plague outbreak would end, when it would recur, and watching so many people die.