[William P]

Recently i stumbled upon Christopher Gravetts book Knight: Noble Warrior of England,1200-1600
ive come to like it a great deal, its been providing a great coverage of the changs to armour and weapons as the cdecades, then centuries, roll by showing the development of the knight rom ithe man in maile fresh out of the crusades, to the last, heavy mounted lancers and pistoliers of the late 16th century. and every development in armour in between.

the book divides the chapters to represent a successive century, i.e chapter 1 is te 13th century, and chapter 4 is the 16th (or tudor period )

though apparently this book is merely a recompiling of 4 of his other books,

im curious if the book has heard of christopher gravett and what people think of his books , both in general, and more specifically in terms of this particular book

there are some notable flaws, for example it was the book that stated 'tests have revealed that an arrow can drill into plate, or something of that fashion.. absurdity of the highest order....

[Chad Arnow]

It's basically several of his titles for Osprey publishing all bound together. Osprey is known for its many series of small books on warriors, battles,campaigns, etc. Some of their titles are quite good, others are not so much. The illustrations vary widely in accuracy based on which artist was used. Again, some are great and others less so.

I have that book, but confess I haven't done much more than thumb through it. It was cheap and I bought it more for the pictures it has (originals and period art) than for the text.

[Jojo Zerach]

I was thinking about getting this book to.
(I was wanting to get his "English medieval knight 1300-1400", but then I saw this is supposed to combine the 4 osprey books in the series into one book.)

[Quinn W.]

I own the book, and I quite like it. I've used it as a regular reference and cited it in several undergraduate academic papers.
I try not to give it too much weight on its own, but it's not too hard to find alternate sources to back his information up. Gravett also offers a nice mix in my opinion. He's general enough for you to get the idea without thumbing through hundreds of pages of dense academic work, but he isn't afraid to give detail and throw out technical terms when necessary. It's certainly not "Knights for Dummies." Most books on knights suffer from over-generalization, but the century-by-century breakdown helps to avoid this issue.
I would say it's ideal audience is someone who has a pretty decent grasp of medieval knights and warfare, but wants a book they can grab and quickly access the information they are seeking.

[William P]

[Robert Hinds]

I have this book also and I quite like it. Not only are the illustrations and pictures great, but the author goes into small details a lot of other authors would leave out.

[Phil D.]

If anyone is interested in a copy and don't mind that they may be missing the dustcover...I found 5 that are listed at Half.com for $1.48.

[William P]

heres the illustration of english plate from the book chapter on the knight from 1400-1500.

the poleaxe is apparently bsed off the the 'fitzherbet effigy c 1475