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REVIEW BY STEPHEN ROBERTS
One of the shoutouts on the cover of Dan Jones’ new biography of Henry V is courtesy of Dan Snow, which tickled me as I know the two historians have been mistaken for one another on occasion. But this book is indisputably the work of Jones. The covers are interesting, with the back lauding Henry V as ‘England’s greatest king’ and the front qualifying that slightly as ‘England’s greatest warrior king’. These are big claims to make, and I sense the likes of Alfred the Great and Edwards I, III, and IV shifting uneasily in their graves.
Another early point of interest is that Jones has written this book in the present tense, which worked for this reviewer. I felt like a time traveller fully immersed in the events described. A book needs a punchy start, and this one gets it, as Jones flashes forward to the 1403 Battle of Shrewsbury’s aftermath and the dilemma facing one Dr John Bradmore, who must deal with an arrow’s iron head that had penetrated Henry’s face and lodged itself six inches rearward in the back wall of his skull. Bradmore must remove this without also removing England’s heir. After that, we go back to Henry’s beginning.
The copy I reviewed was an ‘uncorrected advance reading copy’, which was an interesting experience. I took it in that spirit and didn’t get hung up on typos, which were only a minor distraction in the otherwise free-flowing prose. Talking of ‘uncorrected’, I was interested in the author’s early claim that ‘lynchings’ at the time of the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 had included the Archbishop of Canterbury, although he was actually unceremoniously decapitated. This is how his head comes to adorn St Gregory’s in his birthplace of Sudbury. Maybe Jones is using ‘lynching’ as a euphemism of sorts for being done in by the mob.
For those focused on military history, descriptions of battles and sieges will be of particular interest. Jones’ treatment of the Battle of Shrewsbury is therefore a bit of an anticlimax at around one and a half pages, particularly as it was a significant tussle and the first pitched affair in which the future Henry V fought. I concede the main points are there, most importantly the fact that this was the first battle fought on English soil in which massed ranks of archers featured on both sides, which is why Jones asserts it was ‘one of the worst bloodbaths in English history’.
It was certainly bloody, with maybe 3,000 dead on each side, but it was not on a par with Towton, fought over half-a-century later. Jones also states numbers were fairly evenly matched, although most accounts posit a royalist advantage with maybe a 3:2 ratio in favour of Henry IV, say 14,000 versus 10,000. The account may be brief, but it is true enough, as far as we know, and with Prince Henry just about in one piece we return to the dilemma facing Dr Bradmore.
Dynastic struggles
One small problem I occasionally had was working out which Henry we were talking about, but here I sympathised with the author. It’s not easy when you have Henry IV and Prince Henry (future Henry V) occupying most pages for the book’s first half. This occurs because the author is more than generous with the period before Henry became king (1386-1413), devoting the book’s opening chapters to his development as heir.
My attention was heightened when Jones used the story of John Badby to illustrate how Henry was prone to the theatrical, in this case regarding the burning of Badby for getting too close to Lollardism, a religious movement that demanded the reform of Western Christianity.
As someone brought up in the Vale, I found the story of the doomed Evesham tailor both sad and compelling, given that I’ve delved and written about the place quite a bit, and never come across this tale before now. Some of the research for this book, uncovering compelling vignettes of our history such as this one, is quite impressive. The story is well told, too, as you feel personally invested in the struggle to make him recant.
Jones describes the fault lines in French dynastic politics well, the fissures helping to justify the invasions that are central not only to this book but also Henry’s life. The unholy spilt between Burgundians and Armagnacs is bitter, murderous, and treacherous, so treacherous in fact that even Jones gets confused briefly when he suggests John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, might actually be against the Burgundians. Those mired in these dynastic struggles wouldn’t have known who to trust either.
Becoming king
We’re halfway through the book when ‘Prince Hal’ becomes King Henry, and Jones does a good job in dispelling some of the mythology surrounding the prince, who was allegedly falling out of taverns when he should have been preparing for kingship. In fact, the story was more sober than that, with Henry taking on the trappings of majesty over a period of time, effectively becoming a regent as his father’s health deteriorated over many years. The frustration is not that Henry wasted his time before becoming king (he didn’t) but that he had little time left after he did – just nine years. What he might have achieved had he only lived longer!
For some, it will be the account of Agincourt that holds most interest, for this is where Henry’s legend is burnished. Alas, Jones’ description is again quite brief – at around four pages – but maybe he has a point. Shakespeare’s play has helped make us believe that the Agincourt campaign was Henry V, all ‘once more unto the breach’ and ‘band of brothers’, and yet far more was achieved later. There actually aren’t that many battles to describe for someone who’s been called ‘England’s greatest warrior king’. The battle in the Seine Estuary in August 1416 is dismissed in less than a page but, to be fair, Henry wasn’t present at that one. A nifty quote follows from Henry’s uncle, Thomas Beaufort, Marquis of Dorset: ‘Let us make wars so that we might have peace’. It’s the kind of stuff still bandied about today to justify conflict, and it polarises opinion as much as it probably did back then.
The author also does a good job in describing the main events and achievements from Henry’s 1417-1420 campaign, which achieved far more than the earlier Agincourt one. It led ultimately to the Treaty of Troyes, Henry’s marriage to the French king’s daughter, and the English king’s assumption of the role of French regent and heir presumptive. It was more than Edward III achieved, despite his many victories. And it provides one of those fascinating ‘what if’ moments of our history: if only Henry hadn’t died early, just six weeks or so before the feeble French monarch Charles VI. Dysentery, though, is no respecter of rank: ask the Black Prince.
Too successful?
I said I didn’t want to get too hung up on typos, as I feel that would be unfair having been given privileged access to a proof copy; I trust (and hope) these will have been teased out before the book hits the shelves. There were some interesting ones, however, such as the reference to ‘another spasm of violence in Paris at the end of May 2018’; some understandable confusion between Norfolk and Suffolk; and little Henry VI becoming Henry I at one point. A pity he couldn’t have been as mighty.
Otherwise, Jones sets out his arguments well. For example, that Henry may ultimately have been too successful for his own good, as a string of successful sieges and bellicose demands eventually led his arch-rivals, the Armagnacs and Burgundians, to the one place he really didn’t want them to go, which was into one another’s arms. It was a classic case of overreach.
The book ends by returning to its beginning. Dr Bradmore’s achievement was perhaps not to save our greatest king, or even our greatest warrior king, but to save a man who achieved much in a short life and whose merits are still argued about today. Jones concludes by presenting both sides of this particular argument, and does it well.
When I began writing, I was given sage advice by an editor: namely, to read some Hemingway. I feel Jones may have received the same or similar advice, for he has Hemingway’s uncomplicated style. This makes the book an easy and pleasurable read. For that reason alone, I happily recommend it.
Henry V: The astonishing rise of England’s greatest warrior king
Dan Jones
Head of Zeus, hbk, 464pp (£25)
ISBN 978-1804541937
