Description
A brand-new life of England's greatest king from our bestselling medieval historian
''A historian who writes as addictively as any page-turning novelist.'' Observer
HENRY V reigned over England for only nine years and four months, and died at the age of just thirty-five, but he looms over the landscape of the late Middle Ages and beyond.
The victor of Agincourt was remembered as the acme of kingship, a model to be closely imitated by his successors. William Shakespeare deployed Henry V as a study in youthful folly redirected to sober statesmanship. In the dark days of World War II, Henry's victories in France were presented by British filmmakers as exemplars for a people existentially threatened by Nazism. Churchill called Henry a gleam of splendour in the dark, troubled story of medieval England', while for one modern medievalist, Henry was, quite simply, the greatest man who ever ruled England'.
For Dan Jones, Henry is one of
