There was more background history than I expected, though now that I think about it I'm not sure why this was the case. There should be history in this lecture series. I guess I had expected more about everyday life and the arts and less about the history. (There were lectures on those aspects too. Just not as many as there were on history.)

The lecturer also has a lot of places where she stumbles over a word and then says it again - as you would expect in an actual lecture, but not generally considered to be ok for an audio book. (This aspect really annoyed me.)

In addition, she reads a lot of quotes from period manuscripts. (This makes sense.) She tends to read them in the original language and then translate them into modern English. This made sense the first few times, but gradually came to feel like showing off that she speaks and can translate Old English. (It probably isn't, since I know the original language has nuances that translations don't, but it got annoying.)

Anyway. It's a good series of lectures with a lot of information in them. But maybe space them out and only listen to one lecture at a time instead of letting the audio play through multiple lectures at once. ( )

This is a good course, worth listening to. Dr. Armstrong has a strong grasp of her subject, and presents well. She also has a good sense of humour, which is a help. The medieval world never comes across as a William Manchester-kind of world lit only by fire, although fire there is. My criticisms are that Dr. Armstrong repeats some facts and anecdotes up to three times; and the political coverage is too fragmented to understand the political history of the times without at least a strong layman's knowledge. That is carping though. It is an educational and entertaining listen. ( )

Dad has this title.