Unfinished Business : Reflections on the Middle Ages: Conquest to Peasants' Revolt

Notions of 'progress' can well lead to the positioning of the present as inevitably `better' than the past. But when it comes to issues like the systematic exploitation of power for personal or group advantage and the `othering' of those who rise in protest, the echoes are still clear and pertinent today as are the current challenges of climate change and the threat from pandemics. Unfinished Business neither idealises the Middle Ages nor regards them as past times too removed or `uncivilised' to have meaning or resonance. Despite the vast changes since in society, science and technology, these poems speak to what we share in common with the MIddle Ages: the unfinished business of so many still struggling for basic justice, freedom from want and the recognition of their human dignity.