Synopses & Reviews
The author of the New York Times bestseller The Plantagenets chronicles the next chapter in British historyand#151;the historical backdrop for Game of Thrones
The crown of England changed hands five times over the course of the fifteenth century, as two branches of the Plantagenet dynasty fought to the death for the right to rule. In this riveting follow-up toand#160;The Plantagenets, celebrated historian Dan Jones describes how the longest-reigning British royal family tore itself apart until it was finally replaced by the Tudors.
Some of the greatest heroes and villains of history were thrown together in these turbulent times, from Joan of Arc to Henry V, whose victory at Agincourt marked the high point of the medieval monarchy, and Richard III, who murdered his own nephews in a desperate bid to secure his stolen crown. This was a period when headstrong queens and consorts seized power and bent men to their will. With vivid descriptions of the battles of Towton and Bosworth, where the last Plantagenet king was slain, this dramatic narrative history revels in bedlam and intrigue. It also offers a long-overdue corrective to Tudor propaganda, dismantling their self-serving account of what they called the Wars of the Roses.
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Review
Praise for The Plantagenets
and#8220;Like the medieval chroniclers he quarries for juicy anecdotes, Jones has opted for a bold narrative approach anchored firmly upon the personalities of the monarchs themselves yet deftly marshaling a vast supporting cast of counts, dukes, and bishops. . . . Fast-paced and accessible, The Plantagenets is old-fashioned storytelling and will be particularly appreciated by those who like their history red in tooth and claw. Mr. Jones tackles his subject with obvious relish.and#8221;
and#8212;The Wall Street Journal
and#8220;Delicious . . . Jones has produced a rollicking, compelling book produced a rollicking, compelling book about a rollicking, compelling dynasty, one that makes the Tudors who followed them a century later look like ginger pussycats. . . . The Plantagenets is told with the latest historical evidence and rich in detail and scene-setting. You can almost smell the sea salt as the White Ship sinks, and hear the screams of the tortured at the execution grounds at Tyburn.and#8221;
and#8212;USA Today
and#8220;Jones has brought the Plantagenets out of the shadows, revealing them in all their epic heroism and depravity. His is an engaging and readable accountand#8212;itself an accomplishment given the gaps in medieval sources and a 300-year tableauand#8212;and yet researched with the exacting standards of an academician. The result is an enjoyable, often harrowing journey through a bloody, insecure era in which many of the underpinnings of English kingship and and#172;Anglo-American constitutional thinking were formed.and#8221;
and#8212;The Washington Post
and#8220;Brilliant and entertaining . . . a set of fine vignettes relating dynastic life, death, war, peace, governance, and palace intrigues. The result is a history book that frequently reads like a novel and can be opened to any chapter.and#8221;
and#8212;Tampa Bay Times
and#8220;Blood-soaked medieval England springs to vivid life in Jonesand#8217;s highly readable, authoritative, and assertive history.and#8221;
and#8212;Publishers Weekly
and#8220;They may lack the glamour of the Tudors or the majesty of the Victorians, but the Plantagenets are just as essential to the foundation of modern Britain. . . . The great battles against the Scots and French and the subjugation of the Welsh make for thrilling reading but so do the equally enthralling struggles over succession, the Magna Carta, and the Provisions of Oxford. . . . Written with prose that keeps the reader captivated throughout accounts of the span of centuries and the not-always-glorious trials of kingship, this book is at all times approachable, academic, and entertaining.and#8221;
and#8212;Booklist
and#8220;A novelistic historical account of the bloodline that and#8216;stamped their mark forever on the English imaginationand#8217; . . . Perhaps Jonesand#8217; regular column in the London Standard has given him a different slant on history; however he manages, itand#8217;s certainly to our benefit. . . . For enjoyable historical narratives, this book is a real winner.and#8221;
and#8212;Kirkus Reviews
and#8220;Outstanding . . . Majestic in its sweep, compelling in its storytelling, this is narrative history at its best. A thrilling dynastic history of royal intrigues, violent skullduggery, and brutal warfare across two centuries of British history.and#8221;
and#8212;Simon Sebag Montefiore, bestselling author of Jerusalem: The Biography
and#8220;The Plantagenets played a defining part in shaping the nation of England, and Dan Jones tells their fascinating story with wit, verve, and vivid insight. This is exhilarating historyand#8212;a fresh and gloriously compelling portrait of a brilliant, brutal, and bloody-minded dynasty.and#8221;
and#8212;Helen Castor, author of She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England before Elizabeth
and#8220;This is history at its most epic and thrilling. I would defy anyone not to be right royally entertained by it.and#8221;
and#8212;Tom Holland
and#8220;Jones has written a magnificently rich and glittering medieval pageant, guiding us into the distant world of the Plantagenets with confidence. This riveting history of an all-too-human ruling House amply confirms the arrival of a formidably gifted historian.and#8221;
and#8212;Sunday Telegraph
and#8220;Entertaining and informative . . . Jones has produced an absorbing narrative that will help ensure that the Plantagenet story remains and#8216;stamped on the English imaginationand#8217; for another generation.and#8221;
and#8212;Sunday Times (London)
and#8220;Traditional narrative history at its best.and#8221;
and#8212;The Spectator
and#8220;Jones, a protand#233;gand#233; of David Starkey, writes with his mentor's erudition but also exhibits novelistic verve and sympathy. . . . This is a great popular history, whether you are au fait with the machinations of medievalism or whether Magna Carta mystifies you. . . . The Plantagenets is proof that contemporary history can engage with the medieval world with style, wit and chutzpah.and#8221;
and#8212;The Observer (London)
and#8220;This action-packed narrative is, above all, a great story, filled with fighting, personality clashes, betrayal and bouts of the famous Plantagenet rage. . . . Jones is an impressive guide to this tumultuous scene. . . . The Plantagenets succeeds in bringing an extraordinary family arrestingly to life.and#8221;
and#8212;Daily Telegraph
and#8220;An excellent book . . . The Plantagenets is a wonderful gallop through English history. Powerful personalities, vivid descriptions of battles and tournaments, ladies in fine velvet and knights in shining armour crowd the pages of this highly engaging narrative.and#8221;
and#8212;The Evening Standard
Review
Praise for The Wars of the Roses
and#8220;Itand#8217;s not often that a book manages to be both scholarly and a page-turner, but British historian Jones succeeds on both counts in this entertaining follow-up to his bestselling The Plantagenets. . . . He sets a new high-water mark in the current revisionism of the Tudor era.and#8221;
and#8212;Publishers Weekly (starred review)
and#8220;Jones authoritatively sets the scene for the 15th-century succession crises . . . valiantly pared down for fluid readability.and#8221;
and#8212;Kirkus Reviews
and#8220;Exhilarating, epic, blood-and-roses history. There are battles fought in snowstorms, beheadings, jousts, clandestine marriages, spurious genealogies, flashes of chivalry and streaks of pure malovelence. . . . Jonesand#8217;s material is thrilling, but it is quite a task to sift, select, structure, and contextualize the information. There is fine scholarly intuition on display here and a mastery of the grand narrative; it is a supremely skilful piece of storytelling.and#8221;
and#8212;The Sunday Telegraph
and#8220;Jonesand#8217;s greatest skill as a historical writer is to somehow render sprawling, messy epochs such as this one into manageable, easily digestible matter; he is keenly tuned to what should be served up and what should be omitted. And he still finds rooms for the telling anecdote and vivid descriptive passage. It makes for an engrossing read and a thoroughly enjoyable introduction to the Lancastrian-Yorkist struggle.and#8221;
and#8212;The Spectator
and#8220;A fine new history . . . Tautly structured, elegantly written, and finely attuned to the values and sensibilities of the age, The Wars of the Roses is probably the best introduction to the conflict currently in print.and#8221;
and#8212;The Mail on Sunday
and#8220;Jones is a born storyteller, peopling the terrifying uncertainties of each moment with a superbly drawn cast of characters and powerfully evoking the brutal realities of civil war. With gripping urgency he shows this calamitous conflict unfold.and#8221; and#8212;The Evening Standardand#160;(London) and#8220;Jones tells a good story. That is a good thing, since storytelling has gone out of favor among so many historians. . . . He admits that the era is at times incomprehensible, yet he manages to impose upon it sufficient order to render this book both edifying and utterly entertaining. His delightful wit is as ferocious as the dreadful violence he describes.and#8221; and#8212;The Timesand#160;(London)
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Synopsis
The New York Times bestseller that tells the story of Britain s greatest and worst dynasty a real-life Game of Thrones (The Wall Street Journal)
From the author of Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty
The first Plantagenet kings inherited a blood-soaked realm from the Normans and transformed it into an empire that stretched at its peak from Scotland to Jerusalem. In this epic narrative history of courage, treachery, ambition, and deception, Dan Jones resurrects the unruly royal dynasty that preceded the Tudors.They produced England s best and worst kings: Henry II and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, twice a queen and the most famous woman in Christendom; their son Richard the Lionheart, who fought Saladin in the Third Crusade; and his conniving brother King John, who was forced to grant his people new rights under the Magna Carta, the basis for our own bill of rights.Combining the latest academic research with a gift for storytelling, Jones vividly recreates the great battles of Bannockburn, Crecy, and Sluys and reveals how the maligned kings Edward II and Richard II met their downfalls. This is the era of chivalry and the Black Death, the Knights Templar, the founding of parliament, and the Hundred Years War, when England s national identity was forged by the sword."
Synopsis
The
New York Times bestseller that tells the story of Britain's greatest and worst dynasty--"a real-life
Game of Thrones" (
The Wall Street Journal)
--by the author of
The Templars The first Plantagenet kings inherited a blood-soaked realm from the Normans and transformed it into an empire that stretched at its peak from Scotland to Jerusalem. In this epic narrative history of courage, treachery, ambition, and deception, Dan Jones resurrects the unruly royal dynasty that preceded the Tudors. They produced England's best and worst kings: Henry II and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, twice a queen and the most famous woman in Christendom; their son Richard the Lionheart, who fought Saladin in the Third Crusade; and his conniving brother King John, who was forced to grant his people new rights under the Magna Carta, the basis for our own bill of rights. Combining the latest academic research with a gift for storytelling, Jones vividly recreates the great battles of Bannockburn, Crecy, and Sluys and reveals how the maligned kings Edward II and Richard II met their downfalls. This is the era of chivalry and the Black Death, the Knights Templar, the founding of parliament, and the Hundred Years' War, when England's national identity was forged by the sword.
Synopsis
andldquo;Outstanding . . . A thrilling history of royal intrigues, violent skullduggery and brutal warfare.andrdquo; andmdash;Simon Sebag Montefiore The first Plantagenet king inherited a blood-soaked kingdom from the Normans and transformed it into an empire stretched at its peak from Scotland to Jerusalem. In this epic history, Dan Jones vividly resurrects this fierce and seductive royal dynasty and its mythic world. We meet the captivating Eleanor of Aquitaine, twice queen and the most famous woman in Christendom; her son, Richard the Lionheart, who fought Saladin in the Third Crusade; and King John, a tyrant who was forced to sign Magna Carta, which formed the basis of our own Bill of Rights. This is the era of chivalry, of Robin Hood and the Knights Templar, the Black Death, the founding of Parliament, the Black Prince, and the Hundred Yearandrsquo;s War. It will appeal as much to readers of Tudor history as to fans of Game of Thrones.
Synopsis
The New York Times bestseller that tells the story of Britains greatest and worst dynastya real-life Game of Thrones” (The Literary Review) A stunning achievement that brings one of the most tumultuous and fascinating periods of British history to life, The Plantagenets transports readers to the era of chivalry and the Crusades, the Black Death and the Hundred Years War. The first Plantagenet king inherited a broken, bloodsoaked realm from the Normans and transformed it into an empire that would stretch at its peak from Scotland to Jerusalem. His descendants and their fiery queens, including Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard the Lionheart, Edward II, and King John, shaped England into the country we recognize today and gave it many of the laws, contracts, and bodies of governancelike Parliament and the Magna Cartathat would shape our own nation.
The Plantagenets will appeal to fans of Game of Thrones, as well as to anyone who has curled up with a history of Henry VIII or Queen Elizabeth and marveled at the cunning, the treachery, and the seductiveness of Englands most illustrious monarchs.
Synopsis
From the New York Times–bestselling author of The Plantagenets comes a beautifully produced account of the signing, impact, and legacy of a document that became one of the most influential statements in the history of democracy On a summer's day in 1215 a beleaguered English monarch met a group of disgruntled barons in a meadow by the river Thames named Runnymede. Beset by foreign crisis and domestic rebellion, King John was fast running out of options. On June 15 he reluctantly agreed to fix his regal seal to a document that would change the world. A milestone in the development of constitutional politics and the rule of law, the "Great Charter" established an Englishman's right to Habeas Corpus and set limits to the exercise of royal power. For the first time a group of subjects had forced an English king to agree to a document that limited his powers by law and protected their rights. Dan Jones's elegant and authoritative narrative of the making and legacy of the Magna Carta is amplified by profiles of the barons who secured it and a full text of the charter in both Latin and English.
Synopsis
andldquo;Outstanding . . . A thrilling history of royal intrigues, violent skullduggery and brutal warfare.andrdquo; andmdash;Simon Sebag Montefiore The first Plantagenet king inherited a blood-soaked kingdom from the Normans and transformed it into an empire stretched at its peak from Scotland to Jerusalem. In this epic history, Dan Jones vividly resurrects this fierce and seductive royal dynasty and its mythic world. We meet the captivating Eleanor of Aquitaine, twice queen and the most famous woman in Christendom; her son, Richard the Lionheart, who fought Saladin in the Third Crusade; and King John, a tyrant who was forced to sign Magna Carta, which formed the basis of our own Bill of Rights. This is the era of chivalry, of Robin Hood and the Knights Templar, the Black Death, the founding of Parliament, the Black Prince, and the Hundred Yearandrsquo;s War. It will appeal as much to readers of Tudor history as to fans of Game of Thrones.
Synopsis
The New York Times bestseller that tells the story of Britainand#8217;s greatest and worst dynastyand#151;and#147;a real-life Game of Thronesand#8221; (The Literary Review) A stunning achievement that brings one of the most tumultuous and fascinating periods of British history to life, The Plantagenets transports readers to the era of chivalry and the Crusades, the Black Death and the Hundred Years War. The first Plantagenet king inherited a broken, bloodsoaked realm from the Normans and transformed it into an empire that would stretch at its peak from Scotland to Jerusalem. His descendants and their fiery queens, including Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard the Lionheart, Edward II, and King John, shaped England into the country we recognize today and gave it many of the laws, contracts, and bodies of governanceand#151;like Parliament and the Magna Cartaand#151;that would shape our own nation.
The Plantagenets will appeal to fans of Game of Thrones, as well as to anyone who has curled up with a history of Henry VIII or Queen Elizabeth and marveled at the cunning, the treachery, and the seductiveness of Englandand#8217;s most illustrious monarchs.
About the Author
Dan Jones is an award-winning historian of the Middle Ages. A graduate of Cambridge University, where he studied under David Starkey, he is also the author of The Wars of the Roses. His four-part television series based on The Plantagenets will be broadcast in 2015. He lives in London.