The Two Hundred Years War: The bloody crowns of England and France, 1292-1492

The sheer length of the Anglo-French conflict known as the ‘Hundred Years War’ – which actually lasted 116 years – has long invited debate about the label. Contemporaries, of course, did not use the term, which was first coined by a French historian in the early 19th century. The fighting was not continuous, prompting some scholars to argue that the war should be divided into shorter sub-periods. Others have seen the period between 1337, when hostilities broke out over legal rights to the Duchy of Aquitaine in south-west France, and the expulsion of English forces from most of the country in 1453, as part of a longer continuum. Michael Livingston’s book is firmly within this sec