It was relatively late in my career that I had to abandon the use of sources in original languages when teaching my university special subject. The justification for using Latin and Old French material had been that third-year students should not allow historical judgements to be imposed on them by the translators, but this became pointless when it was clear that so few of them could read the texts that they were being deprived of choice. Translations could anyway give all students and school pupils insights into worlds that would be otherwise closed to them. Ashgate's Crusade Texts in Translation publishes texts, including Arabic ones, that are often as relevant to the general history of Europe and the Near East as they are to that of the crusades and the Latin East. The two new volumes address different audiences. The first will appeal especially to those interested in the general history of the crusades. The second will be a godsend to teachers and others who want to concentrate on the Third Crusade.

Malcolm Barber and Keith Bate, who have already collaborated on a translation of sources for the history of the Templars (published by the Manchester University Press), offer a wide-ranging collection of eighty-two letters covering crusading, settlement in the east and the military orders from 1097 to 1306. Anthologies, however good, will always disappoint readers who miss their favourites and I was sorry not to find the appeal of the nobles in Palestine to Richard of Cornwall in 1241, asking inter alia that Simon of Montfort be made governor of the kingdom of Jerusalem, the extraordinarily informative letter of Master Hugh Revel of the Hospital in 1268, and the letters of Nicholas Lorgne and Joseph Chauncy to Edward i of England that contained a magnificent description of the battle of Homs in 1280. But the translators have included some important and little-known texts; including Patriarch Warmund's appeal in the 1120s to Archbishop Diego of Compostella, the letter of introduction for a wounded knight written, I am sure, by Master Roger of Moulins of the Hospital (erroneously called Raymond in the manuscript) in 1178, Grand Master Armand of Périgord of the Temple's justification of his controversial and disastrous foreign policy in 1244, and the appeal to the west in 1260 from the leaders of settlements threatened by the irruption into the region of the Mongols. The translators make use of some well-known collections: the letters relating to the First Crusade edited by Heinrich Hagenmeyer; the correspondence to Louis vii of France in the 1160s published in the Recueil des historians des Gaules et de la France; the appeals that followed the disaster at the battles of Hattin in 1187; and the letters of James of Vitry edited by Robert Huygens. They have omitted others that covered much the same ground, such as the letters of Oliver of Paderborn for the Fifth Crusade and those of Eudes of Châteauroux and of Louis ix (translated by Peter Jackson in another volume in this series) around 1250 and Grand Master Thomas Berard of the Temple's appeal of 1260, which has already been included by them in their Templar texts. There is a useful brief introduction, but the index would have been even more helpful if it had included subjects as well as persons and places. My only serious criticism relates to the physical state of the book itself, which came to pieces in my hands.

Graham Loud's collection relates particularly to that perennial favourite, the Third Crusade. The popularity of this expedition with the general public stems from the stories of Robin Hood and the novels of Walter Scott and it has become the only event in the history of the crusades that English people think that they know about. Professional historians may have been put off by this. It is certainly the case that their knowledge of the crusade is still imperfect. It has not yet had the detailed treatment accorded to the First, Second, Fourth and Fifth Crusades and it badly needs modern research. Students at school and university have naturally concentrated on the English contribution, the sources for which have all been translated, but the German and French materials have been largely ignored, other than those written by French-speaking individuals who served in the contingent of Richard i. There is no really informative narrative of the experiences of members of the force led by Philip ii, but there are very good sources for the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa's army and in this volume Graham Loud provides all the major ones, the Historia de expeditione Friderici imperatoris, the Historia peregrinorum, the fragments of the account of a participant inserted into the Chronicon of Magnus of Reichersberg, a newsletter reporting Frederick's death, the account of the crusade in the Chronicon of Otto of St Blasien, the Narratio of the German crusaders who campaigned in Portugal, and the Land Peace issued by Frederick in 1188 as part of his preparations for the crusade. Loud's introduction is a model of its kind, containing a full discussion of the texts themselves and interesting observations on the make-up and course of the crusade. So this is more than a work of translation. The introduction is itself a significant scholarly contribution that builds on recent German research and ought to be read at an early stage by anyone interested in the Third Crusade.