Books › The White Company
The White Company
First published 1917 · 709 pages
A sweeping, romanticized plunge into the chivalric ideals and muddy battlefields of the fourteenth century.
What it feels like
Reading this classic historical adventure feels like unrolling a vibrant, slightly faded medieval tapestry. The narrative moves at a steady, deliberate pace, taking its time to immerse you in the sights, sounds, and archaic language of the fourteenth century before plunging into rousing, swashbuckling action. There is an earnest, almost nostalgic romanticism to the storytelling, wrapping the harsh realities of the Hundred Years' War in a warm cloak of chivalry, brotherhood, and honor. The prose is rich and atmospheric, demanding a reader willing to sink into its detailed descriptions of longbows, heraldry, and monastic life. It is a deeply atmospheric, old-fashioned journey that will delight anyone who loves earnest tales of knighthood, camaraderie, and grand, sweeping adventure.
- Mood
- rousing
- atmospheric
- nostalgic
- sweeping
- Tone
- earnest
- romantic
- chivalric
- adventurous
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- brotherhood and camaraderie · the romanticization of chivalry · coming of age · loyalty and honor · the glory of battle
- The writing
- Richly descriptive and deliberately archaic, the sentences unfold like a vibrant, detailed tapestry of medieval life.
- The arc
- The journey shifts from the quiet innocence of a sheltered youth to the thrilling, camaraderie-filled, and sobering realities of medieval warfare.
- Who it's for
- Fans of classic, swashbuckling historical fiction who savor earnest tales of knighthood, archery, and grand adventure.
Content notes
- warfare and battle violence
- period-typical attitudes
About the book
From the book:The great bell of Beaulieu was ringing. Far away through the forest might be heard its musical clangor and swell. Peat-cutters on Blackdown and fishers upon the Exe heard the distant throbbing rising and falling upon the sultry summer air. It was a common sound in those parts - as common as the chatter of the jays and the booming of the bittern. Yet the fishers and the peasants raised their heads and looked questions at each other, for the angelus had already gone and vespers was still far off. Why should the great bell of Beaulieu toll when the shadows were neither short nor long? All round the Abbey the monks were trooping in. Under the long green-paved avenues of gnarled oaks and of lichened beeches the white-robed brothers gathered to the sound. From the vine-yard and the vine-press, from the bouvary or ox-farm, from the marl-pits and salterns, even from the distant iron-works of Sowley and the outlying grange of St.Leonard's, they had all turned their steps home-wards
Description from Open Library.
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