A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain |
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Marc Morris
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Pages: 480 (Hardcover)
ISBN: 0091796849
Pub: Hutchinson
Pub date: 2008-03-06
Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1875
Reader Reviews:
A Great and Terrible King (4/4 people found this helpful)
Last year the 700th anniversary of the death of Edward I passed largely unnoticed. His father, Henry III's 800th birthday was marked by a two day conference at King's College, London and services in Westminster Abbey. but at least we have a new biography of Edward.
Marc Morris, who has made his name as a skilled TV presenter with his series, Castle, and as a serious academic scholar with his book on the Bigod Earls of Norfolk, takes up the challenge of a new overview of this astonishing king. It is twenty years since Michael Prestwich's magisterial life of Edward I. Can Marc Morris bring any thing new? Well, he uses much of the new research of the last two decades and finds new insights. He is particularly good on the public ceremony and processions that surrounded the King and on his Arthurian enthusiasms. He writes engagingly and has some great one-liners. His page-turning description of the Welsh wars had me gripped even though I well knew the outcome. Morris is just to most of the participants although I fear that, whilst he puts the expulsion of the Jews in its context showing that Edward was in line with, and pandering to, the prejudices of his people, he goes too far to accuse Edward of a pogrom. On the other hand, Morris refuses to react in an anachronistic way to the sack of Berwick. I liked the way that he poses interesting questions. Why did the King and Queen go to Quennington and Down Ampney in the springtime so often and what was he doing in East Anglia in 1285 when he should have been getting ready for negotiations in France? Skilful use of charter witness lists and the king's itinerary prompt such questions. Morris never forgets where the King was.
In the end, this a tragic tale. In early 1306, every thing seemed to going well. The threat of Welsh invasions into the Marches was over and the new, more conciliatory dispensation in Scotland seemed to have resolved the outbreak of enmity between the two peoples. The period of mutual tolerance and good relations when the queens of Scotland were English, might have been re-established. The years of dreadful cross-border savagery would have ben avoided. The last days of the King are told in a moving way. The proud, determined old man struggling to move north, abandoning his litter for a war horse to impress his men, only to fail again and to die within sight of Scotland.
A very readable and thought-provoking book which will be useful and enjoyable to both the academic historian and the wider reading public.
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Categories
Amazon.co.uk places this book into the following categories:
Books -> Subjects -> History -> Britain & Ireland -> British Heads of State -> Edward I
Books -> Subjects -> History -> Archaeology
Books -> Subjects -> History -> General
Books -> Refinements -> Language (feature_browse-bin) -> English
Books -> Refinements -> Age (feature_two_browse-bin)
Books -> Refinements -> Format (binding_browse-bin) -> Hardcover