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Henry V

The Astonishing Rise of England's Greatest Warrior King

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Henry V

By: Dan Jones
Narrated by: Dan Jones
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About this listen

'A historian who writes as addictively as any page-turning novelist.' – Observer

Henry V reigned over England for only nine years and four months, and died at the age of just 35, but he looms over the landscape of the late Middle Ages and beyond. The victor of Agincourt was remembered as the acme of kingship, a model to be closely imitated by his successors. William Shakespeare deployed Henry V as a study in youthful folly redirected to sober statesmanship. In the dark days of World War II, Henry’s victories in France were presented by British filmmakers as exemplars for a people existentially threatened by Nazism. Churchill called Henry ‘a gleam of splendour in the dark, troubled story of medieval England’, while for one modern medievalist, Henry was, quite simply, ‘the greatest man who ever ruled England’.

For Dan Jones, Henry is one of the most intriguing characters in all medieval history, but one of the hardest to pin down. He was a hardened, sometimes brutal, warrior, yet he was also creative and artistic, with a bookish temperament. He was a leader who made many mistakes, who misjudged his friends and family members, yet always seemed to triumph when it mattered. As king, he saved a shattered country from economic ruin, put down rebellions and secured England’s borders; in foreign diplomacy, he made England a serious player once more. Yet through his conquests in northern France, he sowed the seeds for three generations of calamity at home, in the form of the Wars of the Roses.

Dan Jones’s life of Henry V stands out for the generous amount of space it allots to the critical first 26 years of his life before he became king. Both standalone biography and a completion of Dan’s sequence of English medieval histories that began with The Plantagenets and The Hollow Crown, Henry V is a thrilling and unmissable life of England’s greatest king from our best-selling medieval historian.

©2024 Dan Jones (P)2024 Head of Zeus
Historical Royalty

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Superb

Listening to Henry V, I feel like I’m in the 15th century with Dan witnessing Henry’s rule and campaigns.

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Brilliant

Another excellent book by Dan Jones. The chronological documentation of the life of Henry V is clear, easily understood, informative and entertaining. So interesting. I had a smattering of knowledge about Henry V, skewed somewhat by Shakespear's wonderful but not historically accurate play. This book, so well read, filled in gaps and gave me a greater appreciation of the achievements of this great king. I will probably listen to it again in a few years' time with as much enjoyment.

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