Forget Blackadder, turnips and the Black Death: medieval England
was extremely sophisticated There's a tendency to think of the
medieval English living an archaic, primitive, Blackadder sort
of life: a lot of knobbly-faced peasants rotating crops,
marrying at 12, before succumbing to their first bubons in the
armpit at 15. An exhibition opening at the British Library
today, Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination, puts that
right. Not only are the 154 gilded books on display
extraordinarily beautiful – and in fresh, glittering condition –
but they also show how sophisticated medieval England was.
Pictured is Winchester's New Minster Charter, an Anglo-Saxon
manuscript, gilded a century before William the Conqueror turned
up. The workmanship and the colour are extremely advanced. It's
not just the works themselves that show up so well. English
Gothic architecture, which appears as a backdrop to many of the
illuminations, comes across as beautiful, skilled and varied,
all the way through from around 1150 A