Ian Mortimer

Who is Ian Mortimer?

Ian James Forrester Mortimer is a British historian and writer of historical fiction. He is best known for his book The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England, first published in the UK in 2008, which became a Sunday Times bestseller in paperback in 2010.

Mortimer was born in Petts Wood, and was educated at Eastbourne College, the University of Exeter and University College London. Between 1993 and 2003 he worked for several major research institutions, including the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, and the universities of Exeter and Reading. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

In addition to The Time Traveller's Guide..., Mortimer has also written a sequence of biographies of medieval political leaders: first Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March, then Edward III, and Henry IV, in addition to 1415, a year in the life of Henry V. He is also well known for pioneering the argument that Edward II did not die in Berkeley castle in 1327 in his first two books and an article in the English Historical Review.

Mortimer has also carried out research into the social history of early modern medicine. His essay "The Triumph of the Doctors" was awarded the 2004 Alexander Prize by the Royal Historical Society. In this essay he demonstrated that ill and injured people close to death shifted their hopes of physical salvation from an exclusively religious source of healing power to a predominantly human one over the period 1615–70, and argued that this shift of outlook was among the most profound changes western society has ever experienced.