The Hollow Crown There is no more haunting, compelling period in
Britain's history than the later middle ages. The extraordinary
kings - Edward III and Henry V, the great warriors, Richard II
and Henry VI, tragic inadequates killed by their failure to use
their power, and Richard III, the demon king. The extraordinary
events - the Black Death that destroyed a third of the
population, the Peasants' Revolt, the Wars of the Roses, the
Battle of Agincourt. The extraordinary artistic achievements -
the great churches, castles and tombs that still dominate the
landscape, the birth of the English language in The Canterbury
Tales. For the first time in a generation, a historian has had
the vision and confidence to write a spell-binding account of
the era immortalised by Shakespeare's history plays. The Hollow
Crown brilliantly brings to life for the reader a world we have
long lost - a strange, Catholic, rural country of monks,
peasants, knights and merchants, almost perpetually at war - but
continues to define so mu