Barry Walsh

I think you’re probably right there, Daed. I doubted my own findings so I consulted a few horsey people (breeders, riders etc) A horse can comfortably carry a third of it’s own weight. You’re average destrier of 15 hands weighed 1200 lbs. So they could comfortably carry 360lbs.
Assuming the average height and weight of a knight was 5’7″ and 150lbs…[Read more]

I wonder if there was a bit of modern extrapolation going on with the notion of destriers being really huge, based on the misconception of the weight of armour? I admit I thought they were vast until I looked into it. If it was thought that armoured knights needed to be winched onto their horses, it would need to be a seriously hefty horse

Thanks, Sandra 🙂 re destriers – apparently the modern shire/ cart/ draught horses are descended from them. Basically they bred some warhorses too big to have enough speed for battle and that’s where the latter great horses come from. I too was surprised to learn that a Medieval warhorse was usually only 15 – 16 hands high. (Apparently I also…[Read more]

Well done, Jules and thanks for the horse breed check list, correcting my belief that a destrier was a sort of fast carthorse. I’m a big fan of Dorothy Dunnett so this will be added to my list.

Thanks, everyone 🙂

I am just about halfway through writing the second book now so the encouragement is much appreciated.

@JaneShuff – that has to be one of the best TBRs 😀

@Bella – I thought I was being flippant when I spoke about lads marrying their mother-in-laws, but having checked, there were cases where families got split up and the…[Read more]

Brilliant! Loved the idea of ‘what horse’…and the 14th C sex manual. 😉

Looking forward to reading. Well done, Jules x

This is a fantastic book. A perfect weekend read. You’ll learn a heck of a lot about the Peasant’s Revolt but won’t realise until the end because you’ll have been so absorbed in the story

Well, congratulations and I hope the book does wonderfully well.

Thanks Stevie, looks great

I wouldn’t worry about agents etc. If you send a Word document then they will understand that it should be viewed in Word; it’s usually what they ask for. I think your problem is that either your browser or Google Docs or whatever gmail uses for previews isn’t displaying Times New Roman properly.

There are things you can try to fix it, such as…[Read more]

Thanks Raine, will take a look and add details to the list

No problem Kate. No point my compiling a list and not giving others the benefit of it. And given my patchy record with subs I’m glad if anyone uses it. It needs a bit of updating, mind

Are you using gmail’s webmail service?

I just had a quick try and noticed that when I clicked on a Word document, it was opened in Google Docs and not Word. My suspicion is that Word is fine but there’s something wrong with the way gmail is rendering Times New Roman. If that’s the case, then a fix depends on what browser you’re using and what…[Read more]

I guess not. Google “troubleshooting font problems in word”, you should find this:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/918791/overview-of-fonts-and-how-to-troubleshoot-font-problems-in-microsoft-w

You might find this useful, scroll down to the troubleshooting section:

Assuming this link works!

I wonder too 🙂

Can I ask for a bit of clarification? If you type out some text in Word using Times New Roman, it looks fine. When you send that as an email attachment and subsequently view it, it appears blurry and hard to read.

At the risk of sounding daft, how are you viewing the attachments? Do you open them with Word, i.e. if Word isn’t…[Read more]

It’s a strange one isn’t it? I wonder if @athelstone can help?