IN THE REIGN OF KING JOHN
A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF PLANTAGENET ENGLAND
DAN JONES
Head of Zeus, 360pp, £25
Most people know little of King John, apart from the fact he was ‘bad’ and lost his treasure in the Wash, but Dan Jones has developed a novel way of presenting history. ‘It is beautifully illustrated, somewhere between a chronicle and a coffee-table book,’ Gareth Russell wrote in the Times, the focus being on the final reign of his reign, 1214-15 — the year when Magna Carta was forced on him by the barons.
‘There is something timely as well as reassuring about this narrative of presenting 1215 as “a year of world changing importance but also of what it was for most people: just another year”,’ Russell continued. ‘High politics, while intelligently and entertainingly discussed here, function as a frame for a travelogue through Plantagenet England... The attention to the details of everyday life is extraordinary.’ John, Russell concluded, ‘for all his energy, failures, ambition, towering rages and pitiful death [surfeit of peaches], is put into the shade by the fascinating country he misruled’.
‘It’s a fun book,’ Sandra Callard enthused in the Yorkshire Magazine. ‘We can all admire a writer’s meticulous research or his knowledge of his subject, and Jones has all that in spades, but his writing also offers an attractive fusion of great scholarship being very simply executed, with appealing jots of humorous tongue-in-cheek observances that bring Plantagenet England to life.’
An appendix contains a 16-page translation of the text of Magna Carta, the best known clause being: ‘To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.’ A fantastic read, as well as a beautiful book to handle.