The Plantagenets: The Kings Who Made England

Description

This brilliant new book explores the lives of eight generations of the greatest kings and queens that this country has ever seen, and the worst. The Plantagenets - their story is the story of Britain. England's greatest royal dynasty, the Plantagenets, ruled over England through eight generations of kings. Their remarkable reign saw England emerge from the Dark Ages to become a highly organised kingdom that spanned a vast expanse of Europe. Plantagenet rule saw the establishment of laws and creation of artworks, monuments and tombs which survive to this day, and continue to speak of their sophistication, brutality and secrets. Dan Jones brings you a new vision of this battle-scarred history. From the Crusades, to King John's humbling over Magna Carta and the tragic reign of the last Plantagenet, Richard II - this is a blow-by-blow account of England's most thrilling age.

Dan Jones is a historian, broadcaster and award-winning journalist. His books, including The Plantagenets, Magna Carta, The Templars and The Colour of Time (with Marina Amaral), have sold more than one million copies worldwide. He has written and hosted dozens of TV shows including the acclaimed Netflix/Channel 5 series, Secrets of Great British Castles. His writing has appeared in newspapers and magazines including the London Evening Standard, the Sunday Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian, GQ and The Spectator.

'Stonking narrative history told with pace, wit and scholarship about the bloody dynasty that produced some of England's most brilliant, brutal kings' Observer 'Colourful and engaging ... Jones has produced an absorbing narrative that will help ensure that the Plantagenet story remains stamped on the English imagination' Sunday Times 'Unapologetically about powerful people, their foibles, their passions and their weaknesses ... vivid descriptions of battles and tournaments, ladies in fine velvet and knights in shining armour crowd the pages of this highly engaging narrative' Evening Standard 'Action-packed ... Filled with fighting, personality clashes, betrayal and bouts of the famous Plantagenet rage' Daily Telegraph 'Dan Jones expertly weaves an enormous medieval tapestry, ranging from the Middles East of Richard the Lionheart's Third Crusade to the battlefields of the Hundred Years War' Sunday Telegraph 'This is an unashamedly royal history and even the most insatiable appetite for chivalric deeds and aristocratic violence will be sated by its conclusion' Sunday Times