Joan of Arc

Acclaimed historian and broadcaster Helen Castor tells the story of Joan of Arc as you have never read it before.

'Popular history at its best.' Daily Telegraph

Helen Castor brings us afresh a gripping life of Joan of Arc. Instead of the icon, she gives us a living, breathing youngwoman; a roaring girl fighting the English, and taking sides in abloody civil war that was tearing fifteenth century France apart.

Here is a portrait of a 19-year-old peasant who hears voices from God;a teenager transformed into a warrior leading an army to victory, in anage that believed women should not fight. And it is also the storybehind the myth we all know, a myth which began to take hold at hertrial: that of the Maid of Orleans, the saviour of France, a young womanburned at the stake as a heretic, a woman who five hundred years laterwould be declared a saint.

Joan and her world are broughtvividly to life in this refreshing new take on the medieval world. HelenCastor brings us to the heart of the action, to a woman and a countryin turmoil, a world where no-one - not Joan herself, nor the peoplearound her, princes, bishops, soldiers or peasants - knew what wouldhappen next.