The extraordinary world so brilliantly re-created in The Hollow Crownwas a turbulent and dangerous one. England was racked by famine, rebellion, civil war, and plague—with the descent of the Black Death and the horrific, ultimately futile bloodbath of the Hundred Years War—and yet, despite the turmoil, this period left a magnificent artistic and literary legacy, creating a recognizable spoken and written form of the English language. Ranging from peasant to king, from field to fortress—including the events that are part of the modern world’s collective imagination, not least through Shakespeare’s history plays—The Hollow Crownbrings the texture of late medieval England to life.