10 books like Isabella

Quite simply the seminal work on the war. It describes the twists and turns of politics and diplomacy in fascinating detail. Not a read on the train but a magisterial study and an essential work for those interested in the subject.

There are lots of books about Crecy, the first major land battle of the war, but here the authors examine and compare all the original sources. Medieval historians were not necessarily interested in the things that modern historians are, so there are many gaps in the various accounts. Similarly, many academics, through no fault of their own, do not understand the mechanics of organising, deploying, and administering an army, or how it actually fought. Here the authors do examine points such as what formation the English armies would have taken up, where exactly the archers would have been placed, and suchlike. While I, with my own military experience, might not agree with all the Authors’ conclusions, they do an admirable job of comparing, contrasting, and shining light into dark corners.

Thomas of Walsingham was a monk in the abbey of St Albans, then the equivalent of the National Archives where all official documents were deposited. Based on the reports, letters, charters, and reports of parliamentary debates that Thomas was able to access, he wrote a history from 1376 until the year that he died, 1422, so the work is an account of the war as it appeared to an educated contemporary. 

Henry of Monmouth, Henry V, was the second king of the disputed Lancastrian dynasty, and in my opinion the greatest Englishman who ever lived. King at 25, slaughterer of the nobility of France at 27, regent and acknowledged heir to the French throne at 32, and dead at 34.  Had he lived, the history of Europe might be very different. He was a man who shaped English history and who still affects Anglo-French relations to this day. This book, by Ian Mortimer, one of the very best authors of the period, looks at the year 1415, the year when the young Henry led a sick, exhausted, and starving English army to a stunning victory over a far larger French force at Agincourt, in an example of leadership and military professionalism of the highest order.  

Like Ken Follett’s other books on medieval England, A Column of Fire is easy to read. The plot runs smoothly and quickly in a way that keeps you glued to the book until you finish it. This time he zeros in on the religious turmoil that gripped Tudor England on the death of Queen Mary. Elizabeth’s ascension was challenged by Catholics who wanted to see Mary, Queen of Scots as the rightful heir to the throne, as well as by the king of Spain, who had another score to settle when he sent a massive armada to conquer England. 

A Column of Fire is a novel but it doesn’t stop Follett, a former journalist with a passion for accuracy, from peeking into the lives of even minor characters into corners I was not aware of. I like Follett’s writing style – easy to read, fast-paced with one new character after… show more.

Going back into the Anglo-Saxon period, Pauline Stafford’s joint study of the powerful Queens Edith and Emma is essential reading. Stafford’s research into these two women is peerless, providing the most comprehensive study of late Anglo-Saxon queenship to date. She has left no stone unturned in her research, giving fine detail to the lives and activities of her subjects. Stafford’s book certainly disproves the common misapprehension that the Anglo-Saxons did not have queens.

And now for something completely different: my other recommendations are dense, scholarly volumes, well written but demanding for a general audience.

It is often hard to imagine the people who appear in their pages, based as they are on the scarce and laconic chronicles of the early Middle Ages, as flesh and blood humans.

In this novel, Puhak breathes life into two of the most remarkable women of the period, the Visigothic princess Brunhild, married off to the Frankish King Sigebert, and her sister-in-law Fredegund, who began as a Frankish slave and rose to become a rival queen to Brunhild.

Their story of rivalry, assassination, murder, seduction, but also of governance and diplomacy as two isolated women wielded unheard-of power across the decades, makes the world of seventh-century Gaul come alive.

The ways that the memory of these two women were twisted and manipulated by both contemporary and subsequent male… show more.

A scholarly account of the family that ruled France from 1328 to 1589. Knecht concentrates on the high politics, but his book is a valuable linkage of the Middle Ages and the early-modern age, taking readers from the Hundred Years’ War to the French Wars of Religion. France’s bloody history emerges clearly.

Star-crossed lovers and a strong female heroine! This setting is the beginning of the end for the Plantagenets. Their royal court is turbulent—filled with secrets and enemies after the dramatic coup of the current king’s father, King Edward II (the events of which are featured in my book). When the beautiful and willful Joan of Kent, cousin to the royal family, is sent to live among them, she soon learns they’re the ones responsible for her father’s unjust execution and her family’s subsequent shame. Though the handsome and chivalrous Black Prince of Wales is falling at her feet, she twists his affection against him in an act of revenge, only allowing Fortune’s Wheel to turn once she decides it should be so.

Forget the Wars of the Roses! Give me the fourteenth century and the reign of Edward III—whose like, according to the chronicler Jean Froissart, “has not been seen since the days of King Arthur." A happy warrior, exuberant ruler, and skilled commander, who at least one modern military historian has described as “the greatest general in English history.” Edward kicked some serious French butt during the beginning of the Hundred Years War. (Great from the English point of view. Devastating for those on the receiving end of Edward’s chevauchees.) The poignancy of outliving one’s peers and one’s time and dying alone—all of that is compassionately detailed in Ian Mortimer’s compelling biography, which reminds us why Edward of Windsor ranks among England’s greatest kings.