Andy King

Andy King is a historian of late-medieval England and Britain, with particular expertise in warfare, political culture and Anglo-Scottish relations. He studied Medieval Studies at Durham University before completing an MA and PhD under the supervision of Professor Michael Prestwich. His research has focused especially on northern England during the fourteenth century and on the effects of prolonged warfare with Scotland on local society, political loyalties and relations between the northern counties and royal government at Westminster. He later worked on major research projects examining medieval chronicles and the careers of soldiers serving the English Crown, including The Soldier in Late Medieval England, which investigated military service between 1369 and 1453.

King's wider interests include chivalry, treason, medieval ideas of honour, historical writing and the role of castles within aristocratic society. He has worked extensively on the Scalacronica, the fourteenth-century chronicle written by the Northumbrian knight Sir Thomas Gray, whose experiences of campaigning in Scotland and France provide an unusually personal view of medieval warfare and gentry culture. His research also examines the political purposes of medieval chronicles and the ways contemporary writers interpreted conflicts involving figures such as Edward II, Edward III, the earls of Lancaster and Roger Mortimer. Alongside his work on warfare and historiography, King has published on castles as expressions of lordship, status and political authority in medieval Britain.