Stephen Church

No English king has suffered a worse press than King John: but how to disentangle legend and reality?The youngest of the five sons of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, the empire builders of the Angevin dynasty, John had small hope of securing any significant inheritance. Then, in 1199, on the death of his older brother Richard, John took possession of the vast Angevin lands in England and on the continent. But by his death in 1216, he had lost almost all that he inherited, and had come perilously close to losing his English kingdom, too. Drawing on thousands of contemporary sources, Stephen Church tells John's story - from boyhood and the succession crises of his early adulthood, to accession, rebellion and civil war. In doing so, he reveals exactly why John's reign went so disastrously wrong and how John's failure led to the great cornerstone of Britain's constitution: Magna Carta. Vivid and authoritative, King John: England, Magna Carta and the Making of a Tyrant is history at its visceral best.

King John

Jonathan Boston

Stephen Levine

This text is accompanied by audiovisual material (CD-ROM).

The General Election of 2002

New Zealand Votes

Ruth Harvey

`Cumulatively (the volumes) are of increasing value as repositories of scholarship on the multi-dimensional subject of knighthood ... highly informative and useful.' ALBION

Papers from the Sixth Strawberry Hill Conference 1994

Medieval Knighthood V

Henry III was a medieval king whose long reign continues to have a profound impact on us today. He was on the throne for 56 years and during this time England was transformed from being the private play-thing of a French speaking dynasty into a medieval state in which the king answered for his actions to an English parliament, which emerged during Henry's lifetime. Despite Henry's central importance for the birth of parliament and the development of a state recognisably modern in many of its institutions, it is Henry's most vociferous opponent, Simon de Montfort, who is in many ways more famous than the monarch himself. Henry is principally known today as the driving force behind the building of Westminster Abbey, but he deserves to be better understood for many reasons--as Stephen Church's sparkling account makes clear. Part of the Penguin Monarchs series: short, fresh, expert accounts of England's rulers in a highly collectible format

Stephen Church

About

Books

Join the club