Medieval England presents the political and cultural development of English society from the Norman Conquest to the end of the Wars of the Roses. It is a story of change, progress, setback, and consolidation, with England emerging as a wealthy and stable country, many of whose essential features were to remain unchanged until the Industrial Revolution. Edmund King traces his chronicle through the lives of successive monarchs, the inescapable central thread of that epoch. The momentous events of the times are also recreated, from the compiling of the Domesday Book, through the wars with the Scots, the Welsh, and the French, to the Peasants' Revolt and the disastrous Black Death.
Edmund King is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the University of Sheffield. He took his bachelor and doctoral degrees at the University of Cambridge, where he was a student of M. M. Postan. He joined the History department at Sheffield in 1966 and has held a chair since 1989.
He has held visiting fellowships at the Huntington Library, USA (where he was a Fulbright Scholar), and at All Souls College, Oxford, and he has taught also at the universities of Connecticut and Michigan in the USA.
This was a good book, King is clearly an expert in his field, but in no way is this alienating. His writing style is very clear and doesn't get bogged down in particulars. It's an over view of quite a lot of history, so again, he's not getting too terribly detailed about any one person.