Will I love The Eagle and the Hart?

This book surprised me. I only picked it up because it was on display at the library and it covered the time period of a couple of Shakespeare plays I've seen, Richard II and Henry IV Part 1. It turned out to provide a fascinating portrait of those two men from childhood to manhood (and kinghood), and a clear picture of European geopolitics in the fourteenth century (one of the most interesting centuries in history). I was also surprised by how fragile the life of the nobility felt, with children effectively held hostage for their parents, or sent abroad to… show more.

Richard and Henry, two royal cousins born in the same year, one blessed by an accident of birth, the other by a surfeit of natural talent, each led by fate and temperament to fight one another for England’s crown. It is the stuff of epic drama, as Shakespeare well knew. But also of epic history in the hands of a master craftsman like Helen Castor. Supported by a treasure trove of new research, ‘The Eagle and the Hart’ is destined to become a classic and an indispensable guide to the causes of the bloody Wars of the Roses.