The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval Europe

Despite the non-traditional structure, however, the book was criticised as perhaps too conservative in its perspective and neglecting a number of areas of growing importance in historical enquiry such as the role of women.

An accompanying trend was the recession of empires like that of Rome's in favour of smaller centres of power and wealth which were in constant competition, thus provoking outbursts of creativity.

[6] David A. Warner in The History Teacher noted that the division into northern and southern chapters generally reflected reality at the time, although there were some cross-European issues that therefore failed to receive a coherent treatment.

Whilst the structure of the book was not traditional, its perspective was, with little attention paid to issues such as the role of women and groups outside the mainstream such as the Jews, although current historical debates such as the Pirenne thesis were acknowledged.

[8] Nicholas Hooper in History, identified some patchiness and omissions in the text with the coverage of Spain uneven and little about Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, but acknowledged that the task of the authors to compress over 1,000 years into 350 pages was difficult.