Has anyone read Either "A Distant Mirror", by Barbara W. Tuchman or "The Archer's Tale" by Bernard Cornwell?

I would be interested to hear the thoughts of anyone on this board.

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A friend of mine who's an historian says that Tuchman is a very *amateur* historian, and many of her beliefs are questionable, but I only read the book once, long ago, and can't remember the exact failings. I was just so shocked at reading a book by someone who so obviously disliked the period.

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Just another opinion, for what that's worth. "A Distant Mirror" is a good place to start, and it's responsible for introducing an interesting period of history (my personal favorite) to thousands/millions of readers.

I found Tuchman's frequent (over a dozen) complaints about the pointy poulaines annoying, and she has a fairly strong anti-church bias which colors her interpretation of the period.

Just my two cents – not my favorite book either.

Bernard Cornwall's "The archer's tale" was published in the UK as "Harlequin". It's supposed to be the first of a series, but I haven't heard anything of further installments - I think maybe it didn't sell well enough to justify doing more of these instead of more Napoleonic stuff.

I liked it. It's not as good as his Winter King/Enemy of God/Excalibur trilogy, but entirely readable, and and the history doesn't have any truly screaming errors.

Couple of points that struck me as anachronistic, but hey, maybe it's me that's wrong.

If you like Cornwall's other stuff, I'd give it a go.

"The Merchant of Prato" by Iris Origo is something to take a look at if you're into 14th C. history. I'm in the middle of it myself, and am enjoying it very much. Origo looks at daily life of a particularily successful merchant through the vast library of documents that survived him. This from the introduction:

"and when, in 1870, some learned citizens of Prato brought them [his documents] to light, an astonishing number still remained: some five hundred ledgers and account books, about three hundred deeds of partnership (some of them belonging to other small companies, connected with his own),. insurance policies and bills of lading, bills of exchange and cheques - and, above all, some 140 thousand letters, of which eleven thousand belong to his private correspondence, and the rest, in 503 files, to the various aspects of his commercial activity."

Talk about a rich source material!! I picked up a cheap Penguin paperback copy, but I'm not sure this is available in the States. Anyway, it's worth a read if you're interested in the 14th C.