Gwenwynwyn ab Owain Cyfeiliog (died c. 1216) was the last major ruler of mid Wales before the completion of the Norman English invasion. Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn (died c. 1286), son of Gwenwynwyn ab Owain Cyfeiliog was a Welsh prince who was lord of the part of Powys known as Powys...

In this short podcast Dr Alex Woolf of the University of St Andrews discusses the impact of the Vikings on Scotland.

In this podcast Professor Michael Hicks of the University of Winchester looks at the origins, the development and the conclusion of the Wars of the Roses.

The terms "Welsh March" and "the March of Wales" (in Medieval Latin Marchia Walliae) were originally used in the Middle Ages to denote the territory/marches between England and the Principality of Wales, in which Marcher lords had specific rights, exercised to some extent independently of the king of England. In...

Normandy originated from a grant of land to Rollo, a Viking leader, in the early tenth century. By the end of that century Normans were to be found in southern Italy, then in Britain and, at the end of the eleventh century, in the near East on the First Crusade....

As part of a project to identify and write biographies of all of the Jews of the medieval Lincoln Jewry, Natasha Jenman, Luka Liu, and Josh Outhwaite have been working on records of Jewish property ownership in the city across the thirteenth century. This allows them to identify those individuals who will be...

This month at the Virtual Branch, renowned medieval historian David Carpenter will delve into the enduring legacy of Magna Carta. Drawing on his recent work uncovering and authenticating a Magna Carta document in the United States, Carpenter will explore why both the dating and the content of this foundational charter...

What was life really like for women in the medieval period? How did they think about sex, death and God? Could they live independent lives?  Few women had the luxury of writing down their thoughts and feelings during medieval times. But remarkably, there are at least four who did: Marie de France,...

In 1135 Stephen of Blois usurped the throne, stealing it from his cousin Empress Matilda and sparking a nineteen-year civil war that would become known as the Anarchy, one of the bloodiest periods in English history. On the one side is Empress Matilda. On the other side is her cousin,...

How did descendants of Viking marauders come to dominate Western Europe and the Mediterranean, from the British Isles to North Africa, and Lisbon to the Holy Land and the Middle East? In this Virtual Branch talk Levi Roach, author of Empires of the Normans, tells a tale of ambitious adventures...

In his recent book The Cuckoo's Lea Michael J Warren provides a exploration of how birds are entwined with British history, particularly in our place names.  Join us for an exclusive Q&A with the author to weave together literature, history and ornithology and discover a fascinating heritage that matters deeply now when so...

The Norman Conquest of 1066. No date in English history is more well known; no image more famous than the Bayeux Tapestry. The very weight of the word ‘conquest’ can seem to resound with an inevitable, onward press of violent conquest spreading outwards across the island of Britain through the...

In this podcast Dr Emma Cavell of the University of Leeds discusses the lives and the rights of women in medieval Wales.