Review
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The Hollow Crown is exhilarating, epic,
blood-and-roses history ... Jones's material is thrilling ...
There is fine scholarly intuition on display here and a mastery
of the grand narrative; it is a supremely skilful piece of
storytelling. (Jessie Childs Sunday Telegraph)
Dan Jones's fine new history [...] locates the conflict not in
the tedious familiarity of modern power plays, but in the
fascinating strangeness of the attitudes and belief systems of
that distant age: a world in which piety and politics converged,
and where the outcome of war was nothing less than the
manifestation of divine judgement. [...] Tautly structured,
elegantly written and finely attuned to the values and
sensibilities of the age, The Hollow Crown is probably the best
introduction to the Wars of the Roses currently in print. (John
Adamson Mail on Sunday 2014-09-14)
[Jones] is an extraordinary storyteller whose scene-setting is
intensely visual and whose characters spring from the page. He
has a gift for an arresting turn of phrase [...] and [...]
highlights engaging details: that coronation rituals often bred
head lice, and that Henry VI was shocked by, and abhorred,
nakedness. Finally, he is comically wry [...] . This is narrative
history at its most brilliant. [...] A Milanese ambassador in
1471 likened the task of describing the ever-changing nature of
events in England to suffering torture. With history in such
skilful hands as these, reading about them is anything but.
(Suzannah Lipscomb The New Statesman 2014-10-24)
Henry VI was a born saint - and that was just the problem as Dan
Jones shows in this racy and vigorous new narrative history.
Picking up where he left off at the end of his accled The
agenets with Henry VI's her, the incomparable
warrior-king Henry V, Jones shows that a successful medieval king
needed to rule strongly (but not tyrannically), her plenty of
y sons and keep defeating the French (Christopher Hart
Sunday Times)
...the gloriously resonant title title of Dan Jones's brilliant
account of the Wars of the Roses - The Hollow Crown - conjures up
Shakespeare's influence not just on our language but on the ways
in which we think about our past ... Jones is a born storyteller,
peopling the terrifying uncertainties of each moment with a
superbly drawn cast of characters and powerfully evoking the
brutal realities of civil war. With gripping urgency he shows
this calamitous conflict unfold. (Helen Castor Evening Standard)
Jones, though a young man, is a traditional narrative historian
in the mould of Starkey, Taylor and Trevelyan. In other words, he
tells a good story. That is a good thing, since storytelling has
gone out of favour among so many historians. (Gerard DeGroot The
Times)
If you're a fan of Game of Thrones or The Tudors, then Dan
Jones's swashbucklingly entertaining slice of late medieval
history will be right up your alley. Exploring the world of the
War of the Roses with a near-novelistic degree of pace and
intrigue, while always remaining scholarly and inful, The
Hollow Crown is every bit as entertaining and readable as Jones's
previous history blockbuster, The agenets... a work of
popular history that has as many cliffhanging moments of surprise
and suspense as any TV miniseries, and is every bit as
entertaining. (Alex Larman Daily Express)
Jones navigates the violence and treacheries that follow in such
vivid prose that everything, even a non-battle, seems incredibly
dramatic and exciting ... Fast-moving, witty and humane, The
Hollow Crown is narrative history at its best. (Leanda De Lisle
Literary Review)
[Jones'] greatest skill as a historical writer is to somehow
render sprawling, messy epochs such as this one into manageable,
easily digestible matter; he is keenly attuned to what should be
served up and what should be omitted. It makes for an engrossing
read and a thoroughly enjoyable introduction to the
Lancastrian-Yorkist struggle. (Sean McGlynn The Spectator
2014-09-13)
Book Description
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The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise
of the Tudors, from Dan Jones - the celebrated author of The
agenets - is an exciting, fast-paced history of the Wars of
the Roses.