This charter from Æthelbald of Mercia to abbess Eadburg of Thanet in Kent shows the high regard in which the abbess was held. She is granted remission on the tax due for a ship she has bought, perhaps indicating that she was involved in trade with the Frankish regions across the English Channel.

Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury from 1093-1109, formerly of the abbey of Bec in Normandy, is here represented by an example of his more intimate writing, namely an exquisite short letter to his dear friend Gundulf, and by an excerpt from his great work, the Proslogion, an address to God in which Anselm meditates on the existence and nature of God and man’s relation to God in a Latin prose studded with Biblical references particularly from the Psalms.

These two charters are the oldest extant charters in Britain, dating from the 670s and recording the donation of land by sub-kings to abbots in Surrey and Kent. These documents already display many of the formulaic phrases to be found in Anglo-Saxon charters, which were usually in Latin, though the information about land boundaries was usually in Old English.

Goscelin was born in Flanders but spent most of his life in monasteries in England. He was a great writer of biographies of saints, particularly of early Saxon women. His Book of Consolation is a wonderfully imaginative work addressed to a woman whom he loved after meeting her at Wilton Abbey before she was sent to a monastery in Gaul. Goscelin speaks much of spiritual friendship and the spiritual life, quotes from Christian and classical text and includes fascinating details about medieval life.

Anselm’s beloved companion Eadmer wrote a biography of Anselm, as well as other historical and theological works. Here an excerpt from the biography gives an insight into Anselm’s gentle way of dealing with others, his commitment to the education of the young, and his use of imagery to convey this thoughts.

Throughout his work, Geoffrey Chaucer often returns to a well-known medieval commonplace: that “words” should be “cosyn” to the “deeds” they denote. After tracing the history of this commonplace and noting its prominence in fourteenth-century legal, philosophical, and literary discourse, this chapter turns to Chaucer’s use of the dictum in his Canterbury Tales. I argue that the Tales may be read as Chaucer’s free exploration of the different kinds of deeds, or matters, to which a poet’s words might be held “cosyn.” Different pilgrims take different positions on this question throughout the Tales, and this accounts, in part, for the variety of matter and styles employed in their narratives. This variety notwithstanding, I suggest the Tales ultimately posit that the proper “deed” of literature is historical in character. Chaucer comes to this insight over the course of Fragment Seven, and he makes his boldest claim for it in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, which suggests that poetry always retains the marks of the history that has produced its words and forms—no matter how autonomous or fictional that poetry may appear.

This chapter revisits the 1940s moment of urban and national reconstruction when the modern planning system emerged out of a tumult of ideas for the reformation of state and society. The 1940s saw the production of a wave of ambitious civic reconstruction plans, and these were often inspired by collectivist visions of social renewal, but the material presented here shows that reconstruction as it was actually practised focused overwhelmingly upon repairing the most valuable commercial districts of blitzed cities—the central shopping districts. I relate this pattern to the intensely productivist vision of reconstruction planning that emanated from central government at this time, as well as an engrained liberalism and administrative economism on the part of central officials. The new Planning Ministry placed supreme emphasis upon business growth and developmental needs while making strenuous efforts to rein in local planning ambitions and public spending commitments. The upshot of these agendas was a mode of reconstruction which aimed to grow the value and enhance the performance of central shopping districts, and planners worked closely with a range of commercial experts and interests to develop planning principles and policies that would maximise the efficiency of local retail environments.