Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King

“Henry’s reign, though so influential—especially in terms of the wars in France, Agincourt, everything like that—was very short. He died very young. So what Dan Jones has done is concentrate on the first decades of his life, before he succeeds his father, showing how he positioned himself, how he trained himself, and how his various competencies were worked into a certain kind of authority. He displayed a real ruthlessness, both in using people and manoeuvring his position. At a certain point, he even seems to have been in opposition to his own father. The king himself, of course, supplanted Richard II, as surveyed in Helen Castor’s book. So it’s a very different figure to the Shakespearean Henry.” Read more...

The Best Historical Biography: The 2025 Elizabeth Longford Prize

Roy Foster, Historian