Canterbury Books

Controversy has rarely been far away. Had the original party of monks accompanying St Augustine in the Summer of 596 had their way, they would have turned back in France and never set foot in England. But once established, the Archbishops soon began what was to be a fatal partnership with the Crown. Dunstan and King Edgar, Lanfranc and William the Conqueror set the pattern, and things soon went wrong. William Warham lost the battle to keep the English Church out of Henry VIII's greedy, destructive fingers, Thomas Cranmer was burned at the stake, and William Laud beheaded. The office was far from a sinecure. But after the excitements of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the eighteenth and nineteenth lapsed into navel-gazing, while the twentieth took to travel.

This book examines the streets of Canterbury in an attempt to detail the history of the people and places contained within them and create a sense of the past here. Discover the derivation of the old streets' names, how they have changed and the new routes in this many-layered city.

A day trip to Canterbury can feel like being 'punch-drunk'. Sometimes there is too much history to see. Great buildings like cathedrals can dwarf their neighbours and smother the memory of their various builders. City walls, seventeen centuries old, hide the changes which altered them; yet every building which has survived war, slump, plague and changing fashion has been adapted to new uses. This detailed history of Canterbury is told through its buildings from its Roman origins to the present day and includes sections on St Martin's church, St Augustine's abbey, the Cathedral, the Pilgrim inns, Royal Castle buildings, Georgian timber-framed houses, the Blitz, shopping malls and universities. The reader is introduced to the builders, traders, craftsmen and saints and sinners who created Canterbury during its long history and tells many surprising stories about the people behind the buildings creating an informative and entertaining read rather than a text-book history.

Since the arrival of Augustine in Kent in 597, Canterbury has been the very heart of the Church in England. The Saxon cathedral, much enlarged over the years, burnt down in 1067. Its replacement suffered a similar fate in 1174, to be rebuilt again. As a result, the modern visitor is presented with a confusing historical patchwork which needs some explanation. Eadmer the singer was an eyewitness to the demolition of the Anglo-Saxon cathedral and the construction of the new one by Archbishop Lanfranc. He also describes the building of Conrad's 'glorious choir' at the time of Archbishop Anselm. Gervase of Canterbury likewise describes the destruction of Lanfranc's church by fire in 1174 and the rebuilding by William of Sens and English William. Professor Willis connects these and other sources, such as William of Malmesbury and Matthew Paris, to his own acute observations, creating a vivid impression of the Saxon, Norman and later cathedral. The text is interspersed with many superb wood ...

At the Tabard Inn in Southwark, a jovial group of pilgrims assembles, including an unscrupulous Pardoner, a noble-minded Knight, a ribald Miller, the lusty Wife of Bath, and Chaucer himself. As they set out on their journey towards the shrine of Thomas a Becket in Canterbury, each character agrees to tell a tale. The twenty-four tales that follow are by turns learned, fantastic, pious, melancholy and lewd, and together offer an unrivalled glimpse into the mind and spirit of medieval England.