I thought I’d list some of the sources I’ve been using for research recently. This doesn’t include most of my academic research (a full bibliography may be found at the back of War and Combat), but concentrates mainly on those things I’ve read while writing my “Edwin Weaver” novels.

Primary sources

There are two principal contemporary chronicles:

L’Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal, ed. by Paul Meyer, 3 vols (Paris : Renouard, 1891-1901)

This is also now available in English translation as The History of William Marshal, ed. by A.J. Holden, S. Gregory and D. Crouch (2002-06) and published by the Anglo-Norman Text Society

Flores Historiarum, available in English as Roger of Wendover’s Flowers of History, trans. by J. A. Giles, 2 vols (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1849; repr. Felinfach: Llanerch, 1995-96)

Much less reliable but nevertheless entertaining is the Récits d’un Ménestrel de Reims (ed. by Natalis de Wailly, Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1876), available in a slightly melodramatic English translation as part of Edward Noble Stone’s Three Old French Chronicles of the Crusades (Seattle: Washington University Press, 1939).

Secondary sources

There’s an absolute wealth of material out there, but here are a few references to get you started:

• Dictionary of National Biography, ed. by Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee, 63 vols (London: Smith, Elder & Co, 1885-1900)

  
  
• Allmand, Christopher, ‘War and the Non-Combatant in the Middle Ages’, in Medieval Warfare: A History, ed. by Maurice Keen (Oxford: OUP, 1999), pp. 253-72

  
  
• Barley, M. W., ‘Town Defences in England and Wales after 1066′, in The Plans and Topography of Medieval Towns in England and Wales, ed. by M. W. Barley (Council for British Archaeology, CBA Research Report no. 14, 1976)

  
  
• Bartlett, Robert, England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings: 1075-1225 (New Oxford History of England) (Oxford: OUP, 2002)

  
  
• Bradbury, Jim, The Medieval Siege (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1992)

  
  
• Brooks, F. W. and F. Oakley, ‘The Campaign and Battle of Lincoln, 1217′, in Proceedings of the Lincolnshire Architectural Society, vol. 36, pp. 295-312

  
  
• Carpenter, D. A., The Minority of Henry III (Methuen, 1990)

  
  
• Crouch, David, William Marshal: Court, Career and Chivalry in the Angevin Empire 1147-1219 (Harlow: Longman, 1990)

  
  
• Crouch, David, William Marshal: Knighthood, War and Chivalry, 1147-1219 (Longman, 2002)
  
  
• Crowfoot, Elisabeth, Frances Pritchard and Kay Staniland, Textiles and Clothing, C.1150-1450: Finds from Medieval Excavations in London (Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 2006)

• McGlynn, Sean, Blood Cries Afar: The Forgotten Invasion of England, 1216 (Stroud: Spellmount, 2011)
  
  
• Painter, Sidney, William Marshal: Knight Errant, Baron and Regent of England (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1933)
  
  
• Pearson, Bernard, History of Conisbrough and Denaby (Bernard Pearson, 1997)

  
  
• Pryor, Francis, Britain in the Middle Ages: An Archaeological History (HarperCollins, 2006)

  
  
• Richardson, Douglas, Kimball G. Everingham and David Faris, Plantagenet Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families (Genealogical Publishing, 2004)

  
  
• Strickland, Matthew, War and Chivalry (Cambridge: CUP, 1996)
  
  
• Tout, T. F., ‘The Fair of Lincoln and the Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal‘, English Historical Review, 1903, 240-65