One opens each new volume expecting to find the unexpected - new light on old arguments, new material, new angles. MEDIUM AEVUMThe articles brought together here demonstrate the exciting vitality of this field. The volume begins with a keynote chapter on the failure of marriages among Christians and Muslims in crusader diplomacy. Other chapters consider the ceremony of knighting and the coronation ritual of Matilda of Flanders. There are also investigations of hunting landscapes in Cheshire, and Lancashire before Lancashire in the context of the Irish Sea World, while lordship is examined in two contexts, in post-Conquest England and early thirteenth-century Le Mans and Chartres. The sources for our knowledge of the period, as always, receive attention, whether drawn from documentary evidence or material culture, with essays on universal chronicle-writing and the construction of the Galfridian past in the Continuatio Ursicampina; the coinage of Harold II; and the patronage of the Bayeux Tapestry by Odo of Bayeux.

Joan of England and Al-¿âdil's Harem: The Impossible Marriage between Christians and Muslims (Eleventh-Twelfth Centuries) (The Allen Brown Memorial Lecture)- Martin AurellThe Forests and Elite Residences of the Earls of Chester in Cheshire, c. 1070-1237 (The Des Seal Memorial Lecture) - Rachel E. SwallowThe Coinage of Harold II in the Light of the Chew Valley Hoard (The Christine Mahoney Memorial Lecture) - Gareth WilliamsChange and Continuity: Multiple Lordship in post-Conquest England (The Marjorie Chibnall Essay Prize) - Hannah Boston'Fitting the missing tile': Universal Chronicle-writing and the Construction of the Galfridian Past in the Continuatio Ursicampina (The Marjorie Chibnall Essay Prize Proxima Accessit) - Gabriele Passabì'Audi Israel': Apostolic Authority in the Coronation of Mathilda of Flanders - Laura L. GathaganBetween the Ribble and the Mersey: Lancashire before Lancashire and the Irish Sea Zone - Charles InsleyThe Helmet and the Crown: The Bayeux Tapestry, Bishop Odo and William the Conqueror - Christopher NortonKnighting in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries - Max LiebermanEnquête, Exaction and Excommunication: Experiencing Power in Western France, c.1190-1245 - Richard Barton