Ralph A. Griffiths

As I embarked on this book, my first thought was that half the middle ages were missing, starting as it did in 1066. A quick examination of the cover revealed that Anglo Saxon Britain had its own Very Short Introduction. As I got the end it was apparent that there was more England than Britain, or at least the discussion of the rest of the British Isles was in the context of English invasion. That said, there is a lot of history crammed into a small format. So much so that it can hardly be recommended for he reader with no familiarity with Medieval history - such a reader is too likely to quickly get lost.… (más)

What kind of biography relegates twenty percent of its subject's life to just two pages?

A nine hundred page biography, that's what.

This is considered the biography of that strange, incompetent, mentally ill, martyred (pick your adjective) monarch, Henry VI -- the only English king to have been deposed twice. Certainly it gives just about every scrap of available information about the period. About the king -- hard to say. There is a lot we don't know about Henry VI (including, notably, the illness that drove him mad. Porphyria? Schizophrenia? There just isn't enough data, although I strongly suspect the latter). If you want to get such information as we have, you can pretty much be sure it's in here.

If you can find it. The book really is too long -- there is too much in here that isn't really about Henry VI. It's a pain to sift. And... it doesn't really illuminate. Take my comment about the book relegating twenty percent of Henry's life to two pages. I'm referring to the ending, from his (first) deposition in 1461 until his murder in 1471. There is no real discussion of what was going on -- just a bare summary of the fact that Henry's wife Margaret of Anjou made a deal to get him back on the throne, and her attempt failed, and afterward, Henry was found conveniently dead. Griffiths doesn't even discuss the oft-repeated canard that Richard III, rather than Edward IV, was responsible for the whole thing -- Richard isn't really mentioned in the whole book.

Ultimately, Griffiths presents much data about, but no insight into, Henry VI. There is desperate need for a good scholarly study of the last Lancastrian king. This isn't it. But maybe you could make it into that study -- if you cut the first 898 pages by about sixty percent, replacing that sixty percent with about a third that amount of analysis, and then increased the last two pages by at least fifty.… (más)