Self-sacrifice, swindles and starvation: the dangerous lives of Medieval women
A new novel dramatises the tale of the fraudulent Holy Maid of Leominster. Marion Turner reflects on this and other horrifying stories
![The Miraculous Communion of Saint Catherine of Siena by Domenico Beccafumi](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/07/26/TELEMMGLPICT000386507582_17219929258340_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqcM9aBJczjGu2JtrWg8AaNSz9Cmq21KUSdqMt5tijWtw.jpeg?imwidth=350)
A new novel dramatises the tale of the fraudulent Holy Maid of Leominster. Marion Turner reflects on this and other horrifying stories
Boccaccio’s Decameron turned the Black Death into a bawdy barrel of laughs – now it’s finding new life on TV
Bedroom farces, jokes about libido and gratuitous slapstick... Our ancestors laughed at remarkably similar things to us
If you wrote your verse in the ‘wrong’ dialect, or were a woman, its chance of survival was slim – but not impossible