Reading List for KCL History V100

Does anyone know what books are on the list? The department doesn't put it on its website (at least I havent' found it) and I don't want to wait til August. I'm bored NOW!

Can anyone help? Perhaps someone starting their 2nd year?

Reply 1

katyrouth

Hey, sorry this comes late - only just found The Student Room. I'm just heading into my third year...

The reason reading lists aren't on the website is that the tutors who write them spend hours doing so, and don't want them plagiarised by every other tutor out there.

What reading you want to do depends on which subjects you want to take. If it's any of the Europe 400-1800, or Britain 400-1400, I can make some suggestions.

Reply 2

Sijia

Britain and Europe 400-1400 sound fascinating. Especially the centuries prior to the Middle Ages, which I've never studied in depth during school.

Thanks for your reply.

Reply 3

katyrouth

The best books for the Europe 400-1200 course are probably
R Collins, Early Medieval Europe for the start, and then
R Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages and
R Bartlett, The Making of Europe for the later period.

For Britain 400-1400, try
A Williams, Kingship and Government in Pre-Conquest England for the early period and
D Carpenter, The Struggle for Mastery for the later. David Carpenter is one of the main lecturers for the course, so you'll get to meet him soon!

They're all big academic books, priced around £15-20, so you may not want to buy them, and I'm not sure they'll be available in local libraries. The KCL library and the University of Library will have several copies of each; you may want to go grab some in Freshers' Fortnight and have a read then? But I wouldn't worry too much about doing preparation for the course: the tutors don't expect you to have any previous knowledge.

EDIT:
Forgot to say, you won't be able to take both courses in your first year. To make sure you have a broad base of knowledge, the department don't let you take courses which overlap in period. If you want to take as much medieval history as possible, you'd be best off doing the Europe courses, 400-1200 and 1200-1500. Let me know if you'd like some reading suggestions for the latter.

Reply 4

Sijia

oooh, thanks for the list!

You know, I'm definitely planning to take Euro History 1200-1500 since I'm just fascinated by the events there. I've only read one book so far on that and it was on Henry VIII's wives, which was pretty fascinating. But otherwise, I've rifled through a few others, I forget the names, but the writing style just bored me to death. :redface:

Reply 5

katyrouth

D Abulafia, The Western Mediterranean Kingdoms 1200-1500 is probably the best intro to Europe 1200-1500.

The Europe courses don't cover Britain (they leave that for the Britain courses!!!) so if you want to do Henry VIII etc you'd be better off doing Britain 1400-1750.