Frank Barlow was Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Exeter, where he taught from 1953 until his retirement in 1976. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1989 for his contributions to historical scholarship. He held fellowships in both the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature.
This biography of Edward the Confessor seeks to clarify the King's image by separating fact from myth. It explores the final years of the Anglo-Danish monarchy and provides insights into England prior to the Norman Conquest.
William II, better known as William Rufus, was the third son of William the Conqueror. This biography recounts his brief 13-year reign leading up to his assassination. The author weaves his account of the king's life into the wider history of Anglo-Norman government. schovat popis
On 29 December 1170, Thomas Archbishop of Canterbury was brutally murdered in his cathedral by four knights from the household of his former friend and patron, King Henry II. The horror that the killing inspired and the miraculous cures performed at Thomas's tomb transfigured him into one of the most popular saints in Western Christendom, and Canterbury became one of the greatest pilgrim shrines in the West. Yet these were unexpected results. Thomas's extraordinary career had been, and remains, controversial. The transformation of a handsome, attractive, and worldly courtier into a zealous prelate, a bitter exile and finally a martyr was for many hard to understand. In this brilliant new biography, based on the original sources and informed by the most recent scholarship, Frank Barlow reconstructs Thomas's physical environment and entourage at various stages of his career, exploring the nuances and irregularities in the story that have been ignored in other studies.