"Terry Jones' Medieval Lives"

I liked "Terry Jones' Barbarians" so much that I dived immediately into his highly entertaining "Crusades" and now "Medieval lives" - to my surprise I quickly recognised that I actually have this book in my collection (it was published simultaneously with TV series) but this is a completely different experience because Terry Jones provides his recognisable off-the-wall visual gimmicks, clowning and yes, Monthy Piton-like visual effects. Just like a book, TV series are divided into chapters ("Monk", "Peasant", "Damsel", "Knight" and so on) while Terry Jones works on turning our perception of medieval live on its head. According to Jones, things were not exactly as bleak as we think - peasants did had some say in decisions making, monks definitely lived far better than expected (some had their own brothels!), ladies were not helpless, weak creatures but occasionally strong willed warriors, knights were actually brutal mercenaries and Alchemists were first scientists who actually came to some of important discoveries far before later celebrated names. The confusion about all of this came much later, when people considered Renaissance like a birth of new human perspective but according to Jones it wasn't like that at all - and Victorians created some quite sentimental ideas and images of what medieval people looked like. Highly entertaining!