Have to read this one: “At one point I found myself asking why I had picked this book. I suppose what attracted me was that it appeared to promise absolutely no point of contact between its subject matter and our own confused and confusing times. Sometimes it is relaxing to retreat into the past for a while. It was also a subject about which I knew almost precisely nothing, apart from what I had gleaned from reading Malory’s Morte d’Arthur: hazy mental pictures composed of a Very Important Lady’s garter falling off, Blondel doing an exhausting tour of free gigs outside every castle in Germany until he found Richard the Lionheart, and Monty Python’s limbless Black Knight saying “It’s just a scratch”. Or to put it another way, if you had asked me to distinguish between the codes of chivalry and the Code of the Woosters I would have been pretty much at a loss.” (via For Honour and Fame: Chivalry in England, 1066-1500 by Nigel Saul – review | Books | The Guardian)
