The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer

Next year brings The Sims Medieval and no doubt there are many gamers around the world salivating at the chance to dress their Sims in doublets and enter them in jousting tournaments. But for anyone interested in just how well the next iteration of The Sims will simulate the Middle Ages, a good starting point is Ian Mortimer's The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England.

Mortimer's examination of life in 14th century England takes the form of a Fodors guidebook. He surveys the land and its people, how they dress and what they eat. Also offered are popular travel destinations and descriptions of inns you'll find on your journey. And a lot more besides.

The book begins with a description of a traveler approaching the town of Exeter. It is the cathedral that appears first, the tower looming over the town's wall. Moving closer, one aspect of medieval life that gets scant attention in movies or on TV is the smell. A brook near the town is filled with garbage and sewage. Unsurprisingly, it is called Shitbrook. In 1377 London was home to some 40,000 people and had no sewer system. Human waste, decaying plant matter, and the corpses of various beasties were serious problems on the streets of the city. Let's face it – the Middle Ages stank to high hell.

Mortimer does a wonderful job of bringing the past to life. I appreciated the way he described the hustle and bustle of town and city life. Yeah, the streets were filled with shit, but they also overflowed with markets with people buying and selling their wares and services. I'm not sure where the word "-mongers" came from but it seems like there were a lot of them back in the day. Fishmongers, spicemongers, etc. (Next time you're at Penzey's, call the person behind the counter a spicemonger and see what happens.) You've got cordwainers making shoes out of leather in one shop and cobblers repairing shoes in another. Mercers are selling leather while fullers clean wool.

These markets are weekly affairs. Some towns, however, have an annual fair where merchants bust out the exotic stuff. Imagine what it must have been like to see oranges and lemons for sale but once a year. We can go to any grocery store around and get citrus fruit cheap. But back in the 14th century they were exotic fruits from far off lands where most people wouldn't even dream of going.

There are all kinds of things in addition to commerce addressed here. We learn about the feudal system whereby villeins are tied to the land. Want to know how to address people or what the etiquette at a feast is? Mortimer is more than happy to tell you. Back then doctors also practiced astrology and would let blood only when the stars were correctly aligned. If that ale you bought was not good and set, do you report it to the shire reeve or the chief tithing-man? Read the book and you'll know.

In addition to the smell, another horror of medieval life was the frequency of nonmeat days. The Church forbade eating meat on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and throughout Lent and Advent. For over half the year people were forbidden from eating meat. (Although what counted as meat back then may surprise you.) I don't know that I could handle that.

However, for me, what makes history books such as this so fascinating is not learning how different things were a long time ago but rather how some things are the same. Take food, for example. To be sure, there are many differences. They didn't have corn tomatoes, potatoes, and all the other foods which originated here in the New World. And yes, we generally don't eat snipe or lark. Hyssop, galingale, and red sandalwood are not common spices today. But we all love pepper, ginger, and cinnamon just as they did back then. Time travelers would be happy to know that medieval folks ate onions, garlic, cabbage, and peas from their gardens. Beef and pork were eaten as well. There were meat pies, savory tarts that we would refer to as quiches, stews, roast animal flesh, jams, cheese, bread, et al.

The chapter entitled "What To Do" probably contains the most instances of the more things change, the more they stay the same. Medieval people loved to listen to music and dance. I grant you that Lady Gaga is very different from some guy jamming on a hurdy-gurdy while another person plays a rhythm on a tabor, but it's a distinction without a difference. We humans love music and love to dance. Mortimer also notes that plays were extremely popular. Medieval people would flock to them. We still perform plays today and I would argue that movies and television are merely the newest incarnations. Games were also popular. The precursor to soccer – campball – was a big to do often involving hundreds of people and is violent. People are maimed and die from playing in a match. Hockey and tennis were also popular.

Children played "hoodman bluff" which is essentially blind man's bluff. They also played "follow the leader" and blew soap bubbles from pipes. Once big difference is that kids today are much more likely to be found online than cockbaiting, which medieval children loved. This is basically stoning a tethered chicken. Yikes!

In the end, The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England was a fascinating read and will certainly appeal to people with an interest in the Middle Ages but who don't hold degrees in medieval history. If I were to cite a fault it is that there are times when Mortimer doesn't fully define certain terms, mainly objects. While he was good at explaining job titles – e.g.- that a gongfermor was someone who emptied barrels of human waste and cleaned toilet pits – he would mention articles of clothing with which I was unfamiliar and not describe them. In another section he notes that a cloth merchant sold verdigris for cosmetics and ointments. I had to look verdigris to discover it was a green dye made from exposing copper to vinegar. But this complaint is minor and nothing that couldn't be overcome by consulting a dictionary.

I recently listened to a radio documentary called "Almanacs: The Oldest Guides to Everything" and a historian had a great quote at the end of it. While I can't give it to you verbatim, he basically said that human history isn't so much a series of eras strictly separated from one another but rather it was more like a conversation with people from the past being constant interlocutors with those in any given present. And that's one reason why love this book so much - it helps me tap into that conversation.