This is a big ballsy history of the sort that is seldom written in these nuanced days, and Seward reminds us of a style that has been all-but lost in this thundering account of the Plantagenet family ? from 999 when Count Fulk burnt his young wife in her wedding dress, through 500 years to the man he calls the ?suicide king?, Richard III? Best of all, and typical of this vivid opinionated history, is the postscript at the end of every reign when the author ? who has not minced his words in the previous chapter ? gives a magisterial summing up of the progress so far?. The general reader will find this book invaluable for filling in gaps of knowledge and putting a vivid story to a previously unknown monarch? It is a dramatic and page-turning history taking in the loss of the Norman inheritance, and then the shifting ownership of the ?English? lands in France during the Hundred Years? War. Seward?s description of the battle of Agincourt is particularly vivid ? this is the medieval world ? populated with heroes and seductresses, gods and murderers ?and few know it better than Desmond Seward