The debate and discussion around Game of Thrones has covered questions of climate issues, industrialization, and questions of power, sex and gender. But in this essential companion to both George R.R. Martin's novels and the HBO show, Carolyne Larrington explores how this remarkable universe was constructed from the actual Middle Ages. The book examines sigils, giants, dragons and direwolves in medieval texts; ravens, old gods and the Weirwood in Norse myth; and a gothic, exotic orient in the eastern continent, Essos. From the White Walkers to the Red Woman, from Casterly Rock to the Shivering Sea, this is an indispensable guide to the 21st-century's most important fantasy creation.

Carolyne Larrington is Fellow and Tutor in Medieval English Literature at St John's College, Oxford, UK. Her previous books include The Women's Companion to Mythology; The Poetic Edda; King Arthur's Enchantresses: Morgan and her Sisters in Arthurian Tradition (I.B.Tauris 2006, paperback 2014); Magical Tales: Myth, Legend and Enchantment in Children's books (edited with Diane Purkiss); and The Land of the Green Man: A Journey through the Supernatural Landscapes of the British Isles (I.B.Tauris, 2015).