The Plantagenets
The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England

Full disclosure—I undoubtedly read this book too soon after finishing The Tudors. While the overlapping content is minimal, and the authors differ somewhat stylistically, both books are broad sweeping histories featuring lots of kings and queens (many of whom shared the same names). Give......more

It began with a ship wreck. The year is 1120. The vessel in question is the White Ship, leaving France for England, setting sail in the dark on a late November night. All on board were in a party mood, including, according to some accounts, the crew. The wine and ale has been flowing with liberality......more

It's hard to call a 500 page book breezy, but everything I have read from Dan Jones can be described that way. In The Plantagenets, Jones tells the story of the royal house of England which spans the years from the tail end of the 1100s to nearly 1500. This is a lot and Jones admits as much in his p......more

I have been reading this book for over three years. It covers a huge amount of English history, far too much to fairly condense into a review. I read it in conjunction with Shakespeare’s history plays, and I found those particular monarchs more interesting as a result. The knowledge of the actual ev......more

It has been a week of competitive reading in the de Lisle household. Bed time, back to back: he reading George RR Martin’s hugely popular Game of Thrones fantasy series; me reading Dan Jones’s The Plantagenets. We both read into the night. But I was the one unable to stop myself reading passages out......more