Jerusalem 1119. A small group of knights seeking a purpose in the violent aftermath of the First Crusade decides to set up a new order. These are the first Knights of Templar, a band of elite warriors prepared to give their lives to protect Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. Over the next two hundred years, the Templars would become the most powerful religious order of the medieval world. Their legend has inspired fervent speculation ever since. But who were they really and what actually happened?

Jerusalem 1119. A small band of knights seeking a purpose in the violent aftermath of the First Crusade decides to set up a new order. These are the first Knights Templar: a group of elite warriors prepared to give their lives to protect Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. Over the next two hundred years, the Templars would become the most powerful religious order of the middle ages - until they were rounded up an accused of heinous crimes. But who were they really, and what actually happened? In this groundbreaking narrative history, the bestselling author of The Plantagenets tells for the first time in a generation the true story of the Templars, drawing on extensive original sources to build a compelling account of a group of Christian holy warriors whose heroism and alleged depravity have so often been shrouded in myth. The Templars were protected by the pope and sworn to strict vows of celibacy. They fought the forces of Islam in Spain and on the sunbaked hills where Jesus lived

The Temple Church, founded as the main church of the Knights Templar in England at the New Temple in London, is historically and architecturally one of the most important medieval buildings in London. Its round nave, modelled on the fourth-century Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, is an extraordinarily early and ambitious example of the Gothic style in England. It holds one of the most famous series of medieval effigies in the country. The luminous thirteenth-century choir, intended for the burial of Henry III, is of exceptional beauty. Major developments in the post-medieval period include the reordering of the church in the 1680's by Sir Christopher Wren, fascinating changes in the perception of the church's significance in the eighteenth century, and a substantial restoration programme in the early 1840's. --

"An epic reappraisal of the medieval world--and the rich and complicated legacy left to us by the rise of the West--from the New York Times bestselling author of The Templars. When the once-mighty city of Rome was sacked by barbarians in 410 and lay in ruins, it signaled the end of an era--and the beginning of a thousand years of profound transformation. In a gripping narrative bursting with big names--from St Augustine and Attila the Hun to the Prophet Muhammad and Eleanor of Aquitaine--Dan Jones charges through the history of the Middle Ages. Powers and Thrones takes readers on a journey through an emerging Europe, the great capitals of late Antiquity, as well as the influential cities of the Islamic West, and culminates in the first contact between the old and new worlds in the sixteenth century. The medieval world was forged by the big forces that still occupy us today: climate change, pandemic disease, mass migration, and technological revolutions. This was the time when the great