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Review of “Henry II” by L. F. Salzman

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Though his name is not prominent today, Louis Francis Salzman was one of the pioneers in the field of economic history. Despite setting out initially to study medicine, an interest in local history led him to switch to a career as a historian. This work led him to write a succession of books about industry and trade in England during the Middle Ages that became cornerstones in their field. Yet Salzman never lost his interest in local history, and was not only a founder of the Sussex Record Society but participated in local archaeological excavations as well. His pen proved incredibly prolific, and extended to the writing of works for children as well.

Salzman’s talent for prose is very much on display in his biography of Henry II. It’s a sprightly read that provides a brisk overview of his life, particularly in comparison with more modern biographers. Whereas Barber and Warren spend considerable space at the start of their books explaining the events of the Anarchy as a way of setting the stage for Henry’s succession, Salzman covers Henry’s ascent to the throne in barely a dozen pages. From there he recounts his subject’s reign in seven chapters, the majority of which are focused in his involvement in one of the many conflicts of his reign, be it with the Welsh, the French, or his own sons.

Yet the one that stands out is the one on “the struggle with Becket.” By far the largest of the chapters, it takes up a fifth of Salzman’s book, which makes the conflict between the two men seem to be the overriding concern of Henry’s reign. Here the contrast with W. L Warren’s analysis of their dispute stood out, to the point where Warren’s observation of the Henry-Becket controversy as somewhat exaggerated seemed a direct commentary on Salzman’s portrayal. What for Warren was largely a low-key conflict between the two men that only became Henry’s dominant concern shortly before Becket’s murder appears in Salzman’s telling the predominant focus of a decade of Henry’s reign. His retelling of it certainly makes for dramatic reading, even if the effect is to overstate its importance.

In this respect it encapsulates perfectly the issue I had with this book. Though Salzman is a fluid writer, his focus on the more dramatic aspects of Henry’s kingship suggests that his primary concern is entertaining rather than informing. This was only reinforced for me by the book’s final three chapters, which follow Salzman’s description of Henry’s final years and his death with description of the social, administrative, and legal aspects of his rule. Crammed as they are at the end, they feel like an afterthought positioned so as to allow disinterested readers to skip over them in favor of the more entertaining aspects of Henry’s life. While this may have been a reflection of the intended audience for this book, like the Becket chapter it leaves the reader with a distorted sense of Henry and his importance to English history.

While some may argue that this is all for the better if it raises historical knowledge, it also raises the question of whether proportion should be sacrificed in the process. Featuring Henry’s conflicts certainly makes for interesting reading, but to me it misses the point of why he is worth reading about today. And while others may disagree, it certainly seems to me that the balance of recounting the various aspects of Henry’s life is better achieved in biographies other than this one, which feels very much an outdated approach to understanding the past.

Review of “Henry II” by W. L. Warren

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One of the things that I have come to appreciate through this project is how certain biographies can dominate the study of English monarchs. Though this is not true for all of them, for some monarchs one work ends up becoming the go-to source for students and scholars seeking to learn about the king. It’s probably more than a coincidence, too, that these books tend more often than not to be the volumes on the subject for the English Monarchs series. Whether it’s Frank Barlow’s book on Edward the Confessor or David Douglas’s on William the Conqueror, the depth of their examination and the quality of their scholarship ensured that they defined our understanding of that monarch for decades after they were first published.

Such is the case with Wilfred Lewis Warren’s biography of Henry II. Though first published a half-century ago, judging from the footnotes that I’ve seen in other places it remains the go-to source on his life and reign. And after reading it for myself it’s easy to see why it enjoys this status. It’s a formidable tome of a book, one that offers an account of Henrys life situated within the context of six decades of English history. Henry himself is virtually absent from the first chapter-and-a-half of the book, as Warren recounts the events that made it possible for Henry to become king, from William Adelin’s death on the White Ship through the key events of the Anarchy. It’s a good an overview of the events of the latter as any that I’ve read so far, and it argues effectively for the motivations and consequences of the players involved.

After situating Henry on the English throne Warren then provides a chronological survey of Henry’s first three decades as king. Not only does this offer a good synopsis of the key developments that defined much of his reign, it serves as a springboard into Warren’s analytical examination of Henry’s rule. While focused on England and its associated realms, unlike many of the other biographers of Norman and Plantagenet monarchs he incorporates coverage of Henry’s Angevin territories into his analysis. This was particularly welcome after its virtual absence from Barber’s books, as to cover a monarch’s rule over only part of his realm is to distort the understanding of the king’s concerns and how he addressed them. Warren’s more comprehensive approach also meant that he does a far better job of explaining how Henry restored stable government to England after the violence of the Anarchy, even if he credits the king more for reviving and expanding his grandfather’s innovations in government rather than devising whole new systems on his own.

But perhaps the most intriguing part of the book for me was his coverage of Henry’s quarrel with Thomas Becket. This was one of those subjects that, thanks to its cultural presence, shaped much of what I knew about Henry prior to starting this project. Yet while giving it due attention Warren makes an interesting case that its role in burdening Henry’s reign has been greatly overstated, as he notes that it was only in the final stages that it consumed Henry’s attention and led him to his fatal expression of frustration. Though Becket was well suited for the mantle of martyrdom, Warren also argues that it proved less beneficial for his cause, as Henry’s contrition plus the reluctance of other bishops to identify with Becket limited the extent of the concessions he was forced to make afterwards to restore peace between Church and crown.

This fits with his generally positive portrayal of Henry, one that ends with a tone of sorrow over his subject’s troubled relationship with his ambitious sons and their quarrels over the succession.  Warren never lets his sympathy for Henry sympathy color his analysis of the king, however, as he offers acute judgments that are all the more persuasive for the clear prose in which they’re offered. The author’s gift for delivering perceptive points in a direct and coherent way helps to explain why the book has become such an influential study of the king and his era. Though its size may deter some, for those who persevere they are likely to finish it with as clear and as thorough an understanding of Henry and his reign as is possible to find between the covers of a single book. It is a hard act for the others to follow.

Review of “Henry II: A Prince Amongst Princes” by Richard Barber

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There’s an adage that authors of nonfiction books are ready to write their works the moment they have finished doing so. It may seem like a paradox, but it gets to a truth about such works, which is that the author never fully completes their research and thinking about the subject until they have finished the book. Yet that is the moment when the author then walks away from the subject, usually never to return excepting for the occasional review article or other short-form piece. This is the reason why I found Richard Barber’s selection as the author of the Penguin Monarchs volume on Henry II so intriguing. Given how infrequently a biographer writes two books about the same figure, I was curious to see what new insights he had gained on top of the understanding he had reached at the end of his previous biography nearly a half century before.

As I read the book, though, I was struck by how familiar it all was. Barber begins with a different approach from that of his previous biography by providing a pen portrait of Henry the man. Starting with extended quotations from Walter Map, an author and cleric who was a courtier of Henry’s, Barber provides a detailed description of the man based on contemporary sources. After so many biographies in which monarchs are described using sources written from a distance of centuries this was extraordinarily refreshing, and it gave me a real sense of what Henry was like as a person.

From there Barber launches into a summary of Henry’s life from his expedition to England in 1147 to his death. As is the case with the efficient volumes of this series, the focus is on England and Barber briskly proceeds through the key points in his life. This is where the feeling of deja vu set in, though, as he touches upon all of the same points he did in his 1964 biography, with little adjustment. The book had the exact same focus on Henry’s conflicts with Thomas Becket and his children, and the same lack of coverage of his major innovations in English government. Whereas the high drama with Becket forms the core of the book and the family squabbles round it out, the fiscal and legal reforms that were the major achievements of his reign were confined to a couple of pages at the end. While it’s an improvement upon his previous book, it is still a limited one.

This may be a reflection of Barber’s sense of his audience. In the brief guide to further reading at the end of the book, Barber classifies his previous work as a “popular biography.” In this sense his choices likely reflect what he believes most readers are looking for in a biography of Henry, which is the high drama that has made his life such a fruitful subject for novels, plays, and movies. And while those readers will finish Barber’s book well-satisfied, anyone seeking to learn about Henry’s greatest contributions to his kingdom will find thin gruel indeed.

Review of “Henry Plantagenet” by Richard Barber

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Richard Barber is a historian with long and extensive career as an author. Originally a specialist in Arthurian legends, he published his first book on them at the tender age of twenty. This proved to be the first of several works from his pen on medieval history and literature, many of which he wrote while working at his day job in the publishing industry. After working for a couple of established presses, he branched out on his own in 1969 and started The Boydell Press, which as Boydell & Brewer is still publishing fine scholarly works on academic subjects. While Barber no longer runs the company, he is quite active in retirement as both an author and as a freelance editor.

As I noted, one of the reasons why I chose his 1964 book of Henry II for my first biography of the king was to juxtapose it with his more recent study of the king. Of course, it also meant that it served as my entry point into Henry’s life, and in this respect it proved very satisfactory. Even at a young age Barber was a lucid writer, and his book offers a good summary for the novice to Henry’s life and times. He does this by starting with a prologue that encapsulates neatly the 12th century world into which Henry was born, which Barber follows with a description of the war between Stephen and Matilda. Barber then follows this with a narrative that addresses all of the key points of Henry’s life: his accession to the throne, his campaigns abroad, and his troubles with his family and with Thomas Beckett. In these he balances well his chronological focus with contextual summaries, which give the necessary background without losing focus on his primary subject.

Given all this, it’s understandable why this book has enjoyed such a long life. Yet the strengths of this book also are its weaknesses, as Barber does not venture beyond providing a narrative of Henry’s life and times. He is good at describing what happened in his subject’s life when it happened, and he offers brief explanations of why it happened as well. But any deeper exploration of Henry’s reign, such as of his fiscal policies or his legal reforms, is absent from his coverage. Because of this, readers who rely solely upon this book for their knowledge of Henry’s reign may finish his book unaware of some of the most important reasons why it was so significant, which is a serious flaw in his book.

To be fair to Barber, nowhere does he claim that his book is the definitive work on his subject. And for readers seeking a clear and straightforward narrative of Henry’s life this book still fits the bill nicely. For those seeking a more comprehensive understanding of his reign, though, this book can only be a starting point, one for which his dated bibliography serves as an imperfect guide. Such a narrowing of its value is perhaps inevitable for any work of history, but in Barber’s case it limits any ability to recommend it as the one book to read about his subject.

On to Henry II!

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Henry II, from The Gospels of Henry the Lion, c. 1175-1188

Henry II is one of those monarchs for whom my introduction came through the movies. In this case it was the film version of James Goldman’s play The Lion in Winter, which had a stacked cast that included Katherine Hepburn (who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Eleanor of Aquitaine) and Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Dalton, both equally impossibly young. Yet it’s Peter O’Toole’s performance that stands out the most for me, and it’s his face that my mind conjures up whenever I think of the king.

Whether that will remain true once I’m done reading the available biographies of him remains to be seen. The selection of available lives about him is the greatest in number since that of his great-grandfather, William I, and promises to take up an equal amount of time. I’ve decided to start with Richard Barber 1964 book Henry Plantagenet: A Biography of Henry II. Though it’s not the oldest of the modern biographies, it looked especially intriguing given that Barber went on to write the volume about Henry for the Penguin Monarchs series, and I wanted to read the two of them in succession to consider how Barber’s judgments about Henry may have changed over time.

Once I complete Barber’s books, I’m going to turn to W. L. Warren’s biography of Henry for the English Monarchs series. This is one that I have seen referenced practically everywhere, which I usually take as a good measure of the book’s stature. It will be particularly interesting to see how his interpretation compares with that of Barber’s as the latter’s biographies bookend Warren’s study of the king.

After that I plan on reading Louis Francis Salzman’s biography of Henry II. As the oldest of the biographies I’ll be reading about Henry, it will be interesting to see how he interprets the monarch absent the recent scholarship and popular images that have emerged since then. I’ll follow this up with a biography by John T. Appleby, a historian who earned a reputation as a biographer of English kings. This is the first of his books that I’ve read, and it will help me determine whether I should read any more if the number of options for future ones requires me to be more selective.

Finally, I plan on concluding my examination with a pair of recent studies. Based on their titles, both appear to offer more targeted studies of Henry’s life and reign than the aforementioned works. The first of these, by John Hosler, is a study of Henry’s military career, which is a perspective that seems unusual enough to warrant assessing. If the title of the other one, by Claudia Gold, is any indication, it examines Henry’s life through a selection of key moments in it. This approach contributes to why I’m saving it for last, as if my reading of her approach is correct, I’m interested in seeing the merits it offers from the more traditional chronological method and the different insights that it yields on its subject.

Just one book on . . . Stephen

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As I noted in my introductory post on Stephen, it’s a little surprising that a king whose reign was defined and consumed with a dramatic civil war (the setting for Ken Follett’s peerless novel The Pillars of the Earth, among others) has been the subject of barely a half-dozen biographies over the past six decades. Fortunately, the overall quality of the books makes up for the lack of the expected quantity, as all of them are written to a high standard of scholarship. Yet ever one of them point to one of the challenges in writing about Stephen that may intimidate some prospective authors, which is the need to explain the odd mix of success and failure that is at the heart of his time on the throne.

For a long time, this meant taking on R. H. C. Davis’s biography, which fifty-five years after it was first published still exerts an influence on interpretations of the king.  Part of the reason for this was for the way it filled the vacuum of Stephen biographies by providing the first modern study based on the surviving sources. These he used to provide an account of Stephen’s life that is very well-informed and makes a powerful argument for what might be regarded as the case for Stephen as a failure. In a sense, the biographies that have followed have been in response to Davis’s pioneering work on him.

It is likely a testament to the effectiveness of Davis’s work that it would be another generation before anyone even undertook a biography of Stephen. Yet while not a biography, Keith Stringer’s short study points to the sort of “Davis revisionism” that would characterize the books about the king that would follow. No work better exemplified this than David Crouch’s book, which stands as a formidable and persuasive rebuttal to Davis’s work, thanks to the author’s abilities as both a historian and a writer. It’s also a more comprehensive account than Donald Matthew’s subsequent study, which is more narrowly focused and not as appealing as a result

Such was the trend of Stephen revisionism that perhaps a reaction to it was inevitable. This is what can be found in Edmund King’s contribution to the Yale English Monarchs series, which, while not presenting as negative a depiction of the king as Davis had, serves as an effective reminder that there are good reasons why so many people over the centuries have judged Stephen’s reign a failure. And while Carl Watkins’s excellent short study does not go quite that far, his framing of Stephen’s reign as a disruptive interregnum highlights the king’s limitations in other damming ways. Yet as well argued (and, particularly in Watkins’s case, well-written) as these books are, Crouch’s book remains the best biography of Stephen for anyone seeking the best single book to read about him and the tumult of his reign. Though some of his arguments have been tempered by the more recent works, it’s still hard to beat Crouch’s combination of readability and analysis.

Elizabeth II, 1926-2022

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Elizabeth II & her husband Prince Philip at the opening of the New Zealand Parliament, 1963

Today Elizabeth II, who had reigned as the 58th monarch of England and its successor realms, died at Balmoral Castle in Scotland. As this is a site dedicated to reading biographies of British monarchs, I thought it appropriate to share a few thoughts.

The first of these is the remarkable nature of her reign. Elizabeth reigned for 70 years and 214 days, a record that will never be surpassed in our lifetimes (for her son, the now-Charles III to do so, he will have to live to the age of 145). During that time, the United Kingdom has undergone considerable change, transforming from a globe-spanning empire rebuilding from the devastation of the Second World War to a nuclear-armed power coping with the consequences of its departure from the European Union. Over this she has had little say, as government today is in the hands not of the crown, but the prime ministers chosen by a majority of the members in the House of Commons. During her time on the throne Elizabeth has seen fifteen different people hold that office, with the last of them, Liz Truss, “kissing hands” with her the day before she died. In doing so, she achieved one final record, outdoing her great-great-great-grandfather, George III, by one prime minister.

Though I have yet to reach Elizabeth in my reading project, as the only person to have occupied the throne during my lifetime I am familiar with her in a way that I am with none of her predecessors. In this I am not alone, as there are entire generations who cannot remember a time when she wasn’t the queen. For me this has meant that she has shaped my understanding of modern monarchy by her example and become the metric by which I judge her remaining counterparts today and, to a degree, her predecessors. Perhaps this is unfair to the latter group, as they faced challenges that she was spared by her largely ceremonial role, but her example of what it means to be a monarch of all the people is one that is difficult to forget.

I have a long way to go until I get to her, and I have no doubt that between now and then the number of books about her life and reign will only grow larger. But when I do it will be with the appreciation of all that she has done to preserve an institution that has endured for nearly 1100 years. In these modern times that is no small achievement, and one that her successors may find difficult to emulate.

Review of “Stephen: The Reign of Anarchy” by Carl Watkins

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One of the things that has come to distinguish the Penguin Monarchs series for me is the more idiosyncratic nature of its choices for biographers. While the Yale series generally selects for their authors the foremost experts on their respective subjects, the editors of the Penguin series often go for distinguished scholars who are not generally known for their work on the monarch about whom they are writing. While few choices were as far afield as was Tom Holland, who is best known for his books on ancient history, such eminent – and excellent – medievalists as Richard Abels and John Gillingham were not the most obvious ones to write about the monarchs that they covered for the series.

Such is the case with Carl Watkins. As a specialist in the religious culture of the Middle Ages he seems an unorthodox choice to author a book about an English monarch. Yet his engagingly-written biography of Stephen is one of the best I have read so far in the series, thanks to its nice balance of detail and analysis. Unlike other Stephen biographies, he begins not with Stephen’s background (which he addresses only briefly) but that of the succession to Henry’s position as king of England. It’s a great way of addressing within the limited space afforded to Watkins not just Stephen’s claim to the throne, but the inherent instability that would lead to the civil war between him and Mathilda over the course of his reign.

Nevertheless, Watkins identifies the flaws in Stephen’s personality as the source of his problems. In this respect his book hearkens back to the interpretation offered by R. H. C. Davis nearly five decades before, though Watkins’s own arguments incorporate the recent scholarship on the period. While acknowledging Stephen’s martial abilities, Watkins presents him as a fundamentally weak personality, one who was unable to play the commanding role his position demanded. Too kind to be the sort of despot his subjects were accustomed to after three and a half decades of Henry’s firm rule, the combination with the muddled succession made challenges to his rule inevitable.

While this makes the challenges to Stephen’s possession of the throne understandable, it does not explain how he ended his life in possession of it. While Watkins credits in particular the considerable role Stephen’s wife Matilda of Boulogne played as an adviser and advocate for her husband’s cause, his main explanation lies in the deadlocked nature of the war, one in which both sides never could gain a clear advantage. His description of the kingdom is as deft and insightful as the rest of the book, and underscores the decline of order throughout the realm. In the end what he sees as ending this stalemate was not any effort on the part of Stephen or Matilda but the deaths of many of the key protagonists and the eventual exhaustion of the rest of the kingdom. The irony, as Watkins notes in the end, was that Henry II’s succession represented the delayed fulfillment of his grandfather’s plans for the succession, which reduces Stephen’s reign a bloody diversion rather than a new era in English history. While this conclusion may contrast with the trend over the past few decades in the historiography of Stephen’s reign as reflected in the other biographies I’ve read, it’s one that Watkins makes effectively through the clarity of his arguments and the sharpness of his prose. It’s a sprightly and provocative account that is enlivened by effective imagery and clever turns of phrase. To me it embodies perfectly what a series such as this one should aspire to achieve: a clear and accessible overview of its subject that gives its reader a sense of the subject and the time in which they lived. While it may not necessarily be the one book on Stephen everyone should read, it certainly is the one with which people should start if they’re seeking an introduction to him and his era.

Review of “King Stephen” by Edmund King

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One of the hallmarks of the Yale English Monarchs series is their selection of top-flight specialists to write biographies of their subjects. This is no less true for Stephen, the biography for whom represented the culmination of Edmund King’s long career studying his reign. Over the course of four decades, not only did King contribute an impressive amount of scholarship on the period – much of which was reflected in the notes and bibliographies of most of the previous books that I’ve read for Stephen up to this point – but he also taught an advanced course on him throughout much of his academic career which, as he states in his acknowledgements, helped him shape the book. As such, he seems not just the logical choice to contribute a volume to a series that strives for definitive studies, but an inevitable one.

And his book on Stephen embodies all of the strengths in such a choice. Starting with an opening chapter describing Stephen’s family background and his early years as a count, King provides an account that moves chronologically through his subject’s life. Though he claims at the start that his book is a biography of Stephen rather than a “life and times” study, he nonetheless provides considerable background explanation of institutions and events. As his notes demonstrate, this is grounded mainly in the contemporary chronicles, which he quotes frequently throughout the text. From them he provides a sympathetic account of Stephen that nonetheless judges him a failure, concluding that he was acting a part and doing so without the conviction that characterized a strong ruler.

It’s an interesting judgment, and one that pushes back in some respects against the favorable revisionism of the biographies that preceded King’s. Yet the effectiveness of his argument is marred somewhat by the way in which he presents it. While the chronological presentation of Stephen’s life is surprisingly coherent, the narrative itself doesn’t flow well between them as the chapters themselves are more akin to essays on periods of his reign than convenient breaks in a single interconnected work. Moreover, after his initial chapter examining Stephen’s rule as count, once his subject takes the throne King focuses on England at the expense of the Norman half of the Anglo-Norman empire. Though hardly unique to King’s study and to an extent an understandable omission in a series devoted to studying English monarchs, many of King’s counterparts have demonstrated persuasively that such a prejudice leaves out factors that are vital to understanding the decisions the occupants of the English throne faced during this period.

To draw a line that excludes an important part of Stephen’s domain is an unfortunate decision on King’s part that defines the limits of the book’s value as a study of his reign. Immensely learned and written with both wit and insight, it’s a book that, like so many of its predecessors in the Yale English Monarchs series is likely to serve as an enduring work on its subject and one that anyone seeking a full and intelligent assessment of Stephen should read. For those desiring a comprehensive assessment of Stephen within the covers of a fluid narrative, though, other books may serve their interests more effectively.

Review of “King Stephen” by Donald Matthew

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There’s a great deal to like about Donald Matthew’s book on Stephen, not the least of which is its author’s straightforwardness. At the very start of his book, he makes his purpose clear, which is to provide an account of Stephen’s reign that is accessible to the general reader. It’s a goal that he fulfills successfully with a text that explains the key issues in a clear style free of historical jargon and the employment of Latin, French, and other foreign terms beyond what is absolutely necessary. He adds to this with a charming anecdote in his preface in which he describes how his introduction to Stephen began as it did for many of his other readers, with a description of the Anarchy in a book aimed towards a popular audience. It’s a disarmingly effective way to connect with his target audience.

The anecdote is also important in another respect, as it sets up Matthew’s target in his book. From the first chapter onward he makes his view clear that Stephen is an unfairly maligned king. While this is an argument that had gained considerable currency before Matthew’s book was published in 2002, he takes it much further than previous Stephen biographers by focusing less on Stephen and more on his historical reputation. This becomes evident with his approach to his subject, which begins not with Stephen’s early life, but with a chapter entitled “Scene Setting” in which he provides a short synopsis of his reign before delving into the evolution of his historical reputation in the centuries that followed. It isn’t until after a chapter describing the monarchy Stephen inherited that he returns to his reign in greater detail, recounting events and summarizing the choices.

Using this approach Matthew makes a number of interesting points absent from the previous biographies that I had read, my favorite of which was his observation that, had Stephen been succeeded by one of his sons, the subsequent dynasty would have done more to nurture his historical reputation. It’s one of those so-obvious-you-missed it points that I didn’t fully appreciate until Matthew made it, but it makes excellent sense. It’s certainly one to keep in mind as well when considering other monarchs who were the last of their line, such as the later Richards, but it’s one that is employed here effectively as a defense.

And therein lies the main issue with Matthew’s study of Stephen, which is that it’s less of a biography than it is an effort to rehabilitate his historical reputation. There’s a complete absence of personal details (Stephen’s wife doesn’t even merit a mention in the book), as the focus is more on Stephen’s actions and the criticisms against them. In refuting them Matthew is to an extent pushing against an open door, as many of his arguments are similar to those Stringer and Crouch make in their books. But Matthew’s rehabilitation certainly eclipses theirs in terms of its focus and clarity. It’s a great book for anyone interested in Stephen’s historical reputation and the damage done to it, but it falls short as a biography of the king.