Richard Barber
The Missing Monarch
The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation
By Ian Mortimer
Jonathan Cape 522pp £20 order from our bookshop
Edward III has had a hard time of it from historians and biographers. At the beginning of this book, Ian Mortimer rightly points out the often extreme prejudice of Victorian historians against him, and the lack of redress in the twentieth century: chivalric and warlike kings have long been out of fashion. Edward’s champions have been unlikely and few: Joshua Barnes, while professor of Greek at Cambridge, produced in 1688 a massive work which is the most comprehensive account of his reign, with footnotes which are still useful today, while at the other extreme, William Blake tried to create the play that Shakespeare never wrote, the missing prologue to the latter’s great series of historical dramas.
But Shakespeare was right to start with Richard II. We remember Edward III for the heroic moments – Halidon Hill, Crécy, Poitiers – and for the Order of the Garter. We may perhaps know something of the splendour of his court, his long and happy
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'There are at least two dozen members of the House of Commons today whose names I cannot read without laughing because I know what poseurs and place-seekers they are.'
From the archive, Christopher Hitchens on the Oxford Union.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/mother-of-unions
Chuffed to be on the Curiosity Pill 2020 round-up for my @Lit_Review piece on swimming, which I cannot wait to get back to after 10+ months away https://literaryreview.co.uk/different-strokes https://twitter.com/RNGCrit/status/1351922254687383553
'The authors do not shrink from spelling out the scale of the killings when the Rhodesians made long-distance raids on guerrilla camps in Mozambique and Zambia.'
Xan Smiley on how Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/what-the-secret-agent-saw