England, Arise: The People, the King and the Great Revolt of 1381 - Hardcover

Barker, Juliet

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1408703351 ISBN 13: 9781408703359

Publisher: Little, Brown, 2014

Synopsis

In the summer of 1381 England erupted in a violent popular uprising as unexpected as it was unprecedented. Even at this critical moment, contemporaries dismissed vast swaths of people as 'the commons'. Yet the records of the revolt provide a rare opportunity to tell the stories of those once reduced to an amorphous mass.

England, Arise paints a picture of medieval life that illuminates a volatile England on the verge of extraordinary social changes. Sceptical of contemporary chroniclers' accounts, Juliet Barker draws on the judicial sources of the indictments and court proceedings that followed the rebellion to offer a new perspective on the so-called Peasants' Revolt. Looking afresh at the facts, England, Arise introduces us to the loyal rebels who believed they were acting in the king's best interests, and suggests that the boy-king Richard II sympathised with their grievances.

Barker uncovers how and why a diverse and unlikely group of ordinary men and women from every corner of England - from the humblest serf forced to provide slave-labour for his master in the fields, to the prosperous country goodwife brewing, cooking and spinning her distaff, and the ambitious burgess expanding his business and his mental horizons - united in armed rebellion against Church and State to demand a radical political agenda. Had it been implemented, this agenda would have transformed English society and anticipated the French Revolution by four hundred years. Written with pace and verve, England, Arise is an important and fascinating reassessment of the revolt itself and an engrossing, original study of life in medieval England.

About this title

Review:

Juliet Barker's thorough, clear-eyed and intelligent new volume adds much to the field: packed with vivid pen portraits of the rebels and the men they hunted . . . a vivid and exciting portrait of a country in angry upheaval. It is as timely subject matter as ever (Dan Jones Sunday Times)

A richly detailed account of the England of 1381 based on painstaking detective work (The Times)

Fine and thoughtful . . . Barker brilliantly picks through the toxic brew of grievances that would, in 1381, boil over . . . a serious and valuable book (Helen Castor Literary Review)

Timely and comprehensive . . . We could argue all day over our favourite turning points in England's history. Barker shows that, without doubt, the turmoil of 1381 cannot be left off anyone's list (Paul Kingsnorth, Booker-nominated author of The Wake New Statesman)

Barker brings order to the patchwork of uprisings

England, Arise purposely slows down the vertiginous speed of the revolt's progression to a more deliberate pace, in order to explore not that main events of the rebellion but their hinterland. In this, it is a considerable achievement, a meticulous anatomy of this most resonant of uprisings

(Thomas Penn Guardian)

A riveting new study of the rising (Mail on Sunday)

Barker gives a richly detailed account of the England of 1381 based on painstaking detective work and resurrects from obscurity the ordinary men and women who enflamed the country (The Times)

A thoroughly researched, engagingly written account of a moment when the world was - almost - turned upside down (BBC History)

Book Description:

A fascinating and evocative account of the Peasants' Revolt from the acclaimed author of Agincourt.

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1408703351
• ISBN 13: 9781408703359
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 528