Richard II: A Brittle Glory

Richard II came to the throne as a child, following the long, domineering, martial reign of his grandfather Edward III. Throughout his reign, he suffered from the disastrous combination of a most exalted sense of his own divine power and an inability to impress that power on those closest to the throne. Neither trusted nor feared, Richard battled with a whole series of failures and emergencies, including the Great Revolt, before finally succumbing to a coup, imprisonment and a lonely death. Laura Ashe's dazzling account emphasizes the strange gap between Richard's personal incapacity and the astonishing cultural legacy of his reign - from the Wilton Diptych and Westminster Hall to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Piers Plowman and The Canterbury Tales.