Eastward bound looks at travel and travellers in the medieval period. An international range of distinguished contributors offer discussions on a wide range of themes, from the experiences of Crusaders on campaign, to the lives of pilgrims and missionaries and traders in the Middle East. It examines their modes of travel, equipment and methods of navigation, and considers their expectations and experiences en route. The contributions also look at the variety of motives - public and private - behind the decision to travel eastwards to lands of strange and unfamiliar peoples. Other essays look...

Contributors: Eric Stanley, Daniel Donoghue, Carole Weinberg, John Frankis, Cyril Edwards, Andrew Breeze, Herbert Pilch, Elizabeth J. Bryan, W.R.J. Barron, Richard Dance, Philip Durkin, Michiko Ogura, Robert McColl Millar, Gloria Mercatanti, Rosamund Allen, James Noble, Lucy Hay, Joseph D. Parry, Marie-Francoise Alamichel, Kelley M. Wickham-Crowley, Kenneth J. Tiller, Lucy Perry, Wayne Glowka

For La amon, or Lawman (both forms are used), a parish priest living on the Welsh March c.1200, the criteria of language, race and territory all provided ways of defining the nation state, which is why his "Brut" commands a diverse readership to-day. The range of view-points in this book reflects the breadth and complexity of La amon's own vision of the way his world is moulded by past conquests and racial tensions. The "Brut" is an open-ended narrative of Britain, its peoples, and its place-names as they changed under new rulers, and tells, for the first time in English, the rise and fall of...