The White Company - Arthur Conan Doyle

'The White Company' is a tale of medieval high adventure, following a young, cloister-raised Saxon nobleman Alleyne Edricson, who must spend a year away from the monks before deciding to renounce the world. Outside, he falls in with a renegade monk and a veteran archer recruiting for the war in France, and decides to see life as a soldier. Edricson's naïve view of humanity is gradually altered by the varied characters he meets - a veritable cross section of the medieval world - from pardoners and palmers, through knights, gleemen and friars, to serfs, peasants and soldiers. And of course, the obligatory Fair Maiden, whose charms serve to spur his aspirations towards Knighthood. Conan Doyle considered 'The White Company' 'the most complete, satisfying and ambitious thing I have ever done', and indeed the book is at once a swashbuckling romance and a meticulously researched history of the Hundred Years War, with descriptive passages that bring fourteenth century England vividly to life. A best-seller from its first publication in 1891, it has never since been out of print.