BBC History Magazine

Disunited kingdoms

Two Houses, Two Kingdoms: A History of France and England, 1100-1300

by Catherine Hanley

Yale University Press, 480 pages, £25

In the High Middle Ages – as, indeed, for much of history – political power was personal. It may be an oversimplification to view a monarch by his famed temperament – to see Richard I “the Lionheart” of England

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