Henry V (the Astonishing Rise Of England's Greatest Warrior King)

By (author) Jones, Dan
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 the most intriguing characters in all medieval history, but one of the hardest to pin down: a hardened warrior, yet also bookish and artistic; a leader who made many mistakes, yet always triumphed when it mattered. As king, he saved a shattered country from economic ruin, and in foreign diplomacy made England a serious player once more. Yet through his conquests in northern France, he sowed the seeds for calamity at home, in the form of the Wars of the Roses. Dan Jones’s life of Henry V stands out for the generous amount of space it allots to his long royal apprenticeship – the critical first twenty-six years of his life before he became king. It is an enthralling portrait of a man with a rare ability to force his will on the world. But, above all, it is an unmissable account of England’s greatest king from our bestselling medieval historian.
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Wildly gripping, swashbuckling, battle-scarred and blood-spattered, in equal parts ferocious, dynamic and political, intimate and humane, the best biography yet of England''s greatest king.
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The king of exciting narrative history triumphs again. A masterclass in making the medieval addictively readable.
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Yet another Dan Jones book that I wish I had written. One of England’s greatest medieval kings gets the biography he deserves from one of our greatest medieval historians.
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Jones’s prose hums with energy throughout, and his ability to marry realm-scale intrigue with family drama marks this out as narrative history at its best.
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Splendidly readable... full of diverting incident and considered judgment... Jones is one of our liveliest historians
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[A] lively retelling of Henry’s remarkable story
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With his customary combination of profound scholarship and fine narrative verve, Dan Jones brings Henry V to life better than anyone since Shakespeare himself. Here is a much more believable king – both for good and ill – than the Bard’s rendition, one rooted in contemporary sources shrewdly analysed. Truly, a Henry for our times.
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Shining fresh light on England’s transformational warrior king, this thrilling new biography of Henry V reads like an absolute blockbuster.
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A badass history writer... to put it mildly
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Praise for Dan Jones: A terrifically colourful and compelling narrative history... bustling and sizzling with life on every page
Biographical note:
Dan Jones is the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author of many non-fiction books, including The Plantagenets, The Templars, and Powers and Thrones. He is a renowned writer, broadcaster and journalist. He has presented dozens of TV shows, including the Netflix series Secrets of Gre