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M. T. Clanchy is Professor Emeritus of Medieval History at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, and a Fellow of the British Academy. He taught at the University of Glasgow 1964-85. He is the author of From Memory to Written Record: England 1066-1307 (Blackwell second edition, 1993) and Abelard: A Medieval Life (Blackwell, 1997). He is the editor (with Betty Radice) of The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (Penguin Classics, 2003).
Peter Abelard was once the most famous man in the world and this book begins quoting Heloise, as the beautiful love letters between them are how they are now most often remembered. Clanchy sets the episodes of their lives in context - most savagely, when Abelard, having fathered a child with Heloise, was seized by her relatives and castrated in revenge - and tells the whole story with the authority of a scholar totally in command of the sources. This beautifully-written book will take you not only to the heart of Abelard, but to the heart of the medieval era in France as well. (Kirkus UK)
