Henry IV (The English Monarchs Series)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.97 (701 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0300154194 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 608 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-03-12 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Henry IV (1399–1413), the son of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, seized the English throne at the age of thirty-two from his cousin Richard II and held it until his death, aged forty-five, when he was succeeded by his son, Henry V. By 1406 his rule was broadly established, and although he became ill shortly after this and never fully recovered, he retained ultimate power until his death. Using a wide variety of previously untapped archival materials, Chris Given-Wilson reveals a cultured, extravagant, and skeptical monarch who crushed opposition ruthlessly but n
“This scholarly and readable contributor to Yale’s English Monarchs series fills an important gap… an impressive achievement, a considered and well-rounded account in which youth and old age get their proper share of attention and the darker periods are lit up by the skilful use of published and unpublished records.”—Jonathan Sumption, Literary Review
"An underrated and fairly neglected monarch" according to david. Henry IV is one of those kings that failed to capture the popular imagination. Sandwiched between his flamboyant cousin Richard II and famous son Henry V, he tends to get treated as a mediocre stopgap. His relatively short reign of 1An underrated and fairly neglected monarch david Henry IV is one of those kings that failed to capture the popular imagination. Sandwiched between his flamboyant cousin Richard II and famous son Henry V, he tends to get treated as a mediocre stopgap. His relatively short reign of 14 years was enlivened by the Glyn Dwr revolt and dynamic personalities such as Harry 'Hotspur' and the dashing Prince Hal, but Henry himself remains firmly in the background, a stolid, uninteresting figure of limited ability whose main achievement in life was to father a hero.Chris Given-Wilson's exhaustive biography of Henry should go a long way. years was enlivened by the Glyn Dwr revolt and dynamic personalities such as Harry 'Hotspur' and the dashing Prince Hal, but Henry himself remains firmly in the background, a stolid, uninteresting figure of limited ability whose main achievement in life was to father a hero.Chris Given-Wilson's exhaustive biography of Henry should go a long way. FictionFan said The Lancastrian Usurper. My existing knowledge of Henry IV amounted to the assumption that he probably came somewhere between Henry III and Henry V. So I hoped that this biography, part of the Yale University Press English Monarchs series, would fill a pretty big hole. And, with a large degree of success, it does.In the introduction, Chris Given-Wilson makes it clear that the book is a political biography of the man rather than a history of the period, though obviously the two are intertwined. Most of the book is a fairly linear account of Henry's life, starting with an explanation of the growth of