Ian Mortimer on Elizabethan England

Thursday March 22nd Exeter Central Library
7.30pm
Tickets £4 from Exeter Phoenix or Waterstones Roman Gate

Ian Mortimer, the bestselling author of The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England, will be joining us at Exeter Central Library on March 22nd to discuss his new book The Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England.

In this book Ian Mortimer answers the key questions that a prospective traveller to late sixteenth-century England would ask. Applying the groundbreaking approach he pioneered in his bestselling Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England, the Elizabethan world unfolds around the reader.

He shows a society making great discoveries and winning military victories, and yet at the same time being troubled by its new-found awareness. It is a country in which life expectancy at birth is in the early thirties, people still starve to death and Catholics are persecuted for their faith. Yet it produces some of the finest writing in the English language and some of the most magnificent architecture, and sees Elizabeth's subjects settle in America and circumnavigate the globe. Welcome to a country that is, in all its contradictions, the very crucible of the modern world.

Ian has published nine other books and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He was awarded the Alexander Prize (2004) for his work on the social history of medicine in seventeenth-century England. He also writes historical fiction, published under his middle names (James Forrester). He lives with his wife and three children on the edge of Dartmoor, in Devon. For further information about him and a full bibliography, see his website: www.ianmortimer.com.

Praise for The Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England

‘This is the history book I've been waiting for: the essential handbook for any would-be Time Lords wishing to travel to the Middle Ages. Thorough, detailed and totally absorbing.’ – Jason Webster

‘Social history is popular enough but I have read nothing quite like this. It is written in the manner of an extremely well-informed but chatty guidebook...This is not only an unusual book, but a thoroughly engaging one’ – Literary Review

‘[Mortimer] sets out to re-enchant the 14th Century, taking us by the hand through a landscape furnished with jousting nights, revolting peasants and beautiful ladies in wimples. It is Monty Python and the Holy Grail with footnotes, and, my goodness it is fun...the result of this careful blend of scholarship and fancy is a jaunty journey through the 14th Century, one that wriggles with the stuff of everyday life.’ – Guardian

‘Perhaps the most enjoyable history book I've read all year.’ - Paul Howe, Independent

‘Addressing the reader directly, his aim, triumphantly achieved, is to engage our sympathies with people whose similarities to us are as fascinating as their lives.’ – Sunday Telegraph

‘Ian Mortimer is taking readers on a sense-smacking tour of the 14th century, which is guaranteed to make us wrinkle our noses in disgust and delight by turns.’ – Daily Mail