For someone just learning about Richard II, this is an interesting place to start, even though it begins at the end, so to speak. This book is mostly concerned about Richard’s relationship with his uncles and great magnates, the Lords Appellant, who humiliated him and nearly dethroned him in 1387. It takes ten years to reap his revenge. The prose is very colorful and reminds me of Thomas B. Costain; in other words, the author elaborates in a way that can be neither proven nor disproven but makes for lively reading. For instance: “At last, Richard had the wherewithal to reward his friends. Like a child suddenly showered with gold, he couldn’t resist. The rights of the two young Mortimer boys were conveniently forgotten.” (This is early on, when Richard was rebuked for giving away the wardship that should have stayed with the crown.) I have no problem with this style of writing, unless it goes a little too far. I ran across some passages that made me exclaim in surprise, for they were much more detailed than anything else I have found (so far). Here’s a particularly explosive scene: “In a flash, Richard’s fragile self-control deserted him. The fury of being lectured to by these old men flooded back, but he was beyond words this time. On the barge’s deck in the middle of the Thames, with everyone from bishops to boatmen looking on, the King of England drew his sword and lunged at the Archbishop’s chest. Thomas of Woodstock instinctively grabbed his nephew’s arm… Thomas bellowed at the Archbishop to get out of the way. Courtenay fled, stumbling back into his own barge. Thomas grabbed the King’s hand and prised the sword away one finger at a time, at last wrenching it free and handing it to one of the household, safely out of reach.” Wow. That reads like a novel! I love novels and especially historical fiction, but I prefer that straight histories keep to the facts.
I was willing to give the author the benefit of the doubt, but alas, when halfway through the book, talking about Edward II’s deposition, the author said: “Three generations before that, King John had forestalled a similar fate only by a premature death from a surfeit of eels.” What? I can only assume he mixed up King John and Henry I, who famously died from a “surfeit of lampreys”. But unfortunately, this gaffe cast a doubt over the rest of the information, deserved or not. I did finish the book—and enjoyed it. The scene at Radcot Bridge was written so well it seemed like the author must have been there. Nonetheless, I came to view the story as a means of stimulating creative juices rather than taking it as pure fact. Anything new I discovered from this book needed to be confirmed from other sources. That’s not a terrible thing, and I would have done it anyway. But in my mind this book is a cross between history and historical fiction and needs to be read more for enjoyment than information-gathering.
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Top reviews from other countries
Mark Pibworth
History in bite size chunks
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 1, 2015
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Short and Sweet
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 14, 2015Barbara Cottier
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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 11, 2018