BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS FOR LIONHEART

Penman

For the first time, I listed a bibliography in Lionheart, not all of the books I consulted, of course, but those that I found most helpful.  I’ve been asked to provide it before Lionheart’s publication, and I am happy to do so.  Here is the part of my Acknowledgments Page that deals with book recommendations.    

 More and more of my readers have been asking me to include a bibliography for my novels.  I have begun listing some of my sources on my website and blog, but that doesn’t help those readers without internet access.  So I am going to cite here the cream of the crop, those books I found to be most helpful and most reliable.  The gold standard for Ricardian biographies remains John Gillingham’s Richard I, published in 1999 by the Yale University Press; he has also written Richard Coeur de Lion; Kingship, Chivalry, and War in the Twelfth Century.  The Reign of Richard Lionheart by Ralph Turner and Richard R. Heiser does not address the most consequential and fateful event of Richard’s life—the Third Crusade—but it does cover the remainder of his reign and has an excellent concluding chapter called “Richard in Retrospect,” which analyses the way his reputation has fluctuated over the centuries.  Kate Norgate’s Richard the Lionheart, published in 1924, has stood the test of time surprisingly well.  In all honesty, I have not read the second half of Frank McLynn’s Richard and John, Kings at War, but the half of the book about Richard is accurate and insightful.   I also recommend Richard Coeur de Lion in History and Muth, edited by Janet Nelson, The Legends of King Richard I Coeur de Lion, by Bradford Broughton, and The Plantagenet Empire, by Martin Aurell, translated by David Crouch.  

        My favorite book about Richard’s mother is Eleanor of Aquitaine, Lord and Lady, a notable collection of essays edited by Bonnie Wheeler.  There are a number of biographies written about Eleanor, more than Henry, which would probably not please him much.  Just to list a few of her biographers: Ralph Turner, Regine Peroud, Allison Weir, Regine Pernaud, Jean Flori, Douglas Boyd, D.D. R Owen,Marion Meade, and Amy Kelly, though the last two authors’ conclusions about the so-called Courts of Love are no longer accepted.  I also recommend The World of Eleanor of Aquitaine: Literature and Society in Southern France between the Eleventh and Thirteenth Centuries, edited by Marcus Bull and Catherine Leglu, and Eleanor of Aquitaine, Courtly Love, and the Troubadours, by Ffiona Swabey.

        I was blessed with a treasure-trove while researching and writing Lionheart—two chronicles written by men who’d accompanied Richard on crusade, and two by members of Salah al-Din’s inner circle.   I felt very fortunate to have access to Helen Nicholson’s translation of The Chronicle of the Third Crusade, the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, and Marianne Ailes’s translation of The History of the Holy War; Ambroise’s Estoire de la Guerre Sainte; these wonderful books make fascinating reading and provide invaluable footnotes about the persons and places mentioned in the texts. Another crusader chronicle is The Conquest of Jerusalem and the Third Crusade, Sources in Translation, by Peter W. Edbury, and then there is Chronicles of the Crusades, edited by Elizabeth Hallam.  Baha al-Din ibn Shaddad wrote a compelling account of his time with Salah al-Din; in Lionheart, I quoted from the 19th century edition, Saladin or What Befell Sultan Yusuf, translated by the Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society, but there is a more modern translation by D. S. Richards, complete with annotated notes, titled The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin.  Other contemporary chronicles are The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir for the Crusading Period, from al-Kamil fi’l-ta’rikh, Part 2, also translated by D.S. Richards, and a chronicle written by one of Salah al-Din’s scribes, Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani, translated into French by Henri Masse as Conquete de la Syrie et de la Palestaine par Saladin.  There is also Arab Historians of the Crusades, translated by Francesco Gabrieli. Non-crusading chronicles include The Chronicle of Richard of Devizes, translated by J.A. Giles, The History of William of Newburgh, translated by Joseph Stevenson, The Annals of Roger de Hoveden, translated by Henry T. Riley, and History of William Marshal, translated by S. Gregory and annotated by D. Crouch.

     Moving on to Sicily and Cyprus, there is The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, translated by Roland Broadhurst, a remarkable account of a pilgrimage to Mecca made by a Spanish Muslim in 1182-1183; his description of a deadly storm in the Straits of Messina was my inspiration for Alicia’s shipwreck in Chapter One of Lionheart.  The Kingdom in the Sun by John Julius Norwich is a beautifully written book about Norman Sicily, although his “take” on Richard is outdated.  Another outstanding book about Sicily is Admiral Eugenius of Sicily, his Life and Work and the Authorship of the Epistola ad Petrum and the Historia Hugonis Falcandi Siculi, by Evelyn Jamison; it is, however, almost as hard to find as the Holy Grail.  For the history of medieval Cyprus, readers need look no further than Peter Edbury’s The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191-1374.

     The best book about the Crusades, IMHO, is Thomas Asbridge’s riveting The Crusades.  Other books on my list include God’s War, by Christopher Tyerman, Holy Warriors, a Modern History of the Crusades, by Jonathan Phillips, Fighting for the Cross, by Norman Housley, the six volume A History of the Crusades, edited by Kenneth Setton, and The Assassins, by Bernard Lewis.  The definitive study of Salah al-Din is still Saladin; the Politics of the Holy War, by Malcolm Cameron Lyons and D.E.P. Jackson.  I also recommend The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives, by Carole Hillenbrand.  Some social histories are The World of the Crusaders, by Joshua Prawer, The Crusaders in the Holy Land, by Meron Benvenisti, Medicine in the Crusades, by Piers D. Mitchell, and Daily Life in the Medieval Islamic World, by James E. Lindsay.  For books dealing with warfare during the Crusades, a classic study is Crusading Warfare, 1097-1193, by R.C. Smail; there is also David Nicolle’s two volume Crusader Warfare.

       Lastly, for books that cover medieval warfare in general, I have several exceptional books to recommend:  By Fire and Sword; Cruelty and Atrocity in Medieval Warfare, by Sean McGlynn, Noble Ideals and Bloody Realities; Warfare in the Middle Ages, edited by Niall Christie and Maya Yazigi, Western Warfare in the Ages of the Crusades, 1000-1300, by John France, Tolerance and Intolerance; Social Conflict in the Age of the Crusades, edited by Michael Gervers and James M. Powell, and War and Chivalry; the Conduct and Perception of War in England and Normandy, 1066-1217, by Matthew Strickland.  

69 thoughts on “BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS FOR LIONHEART”

  1. Here is today’s Facebook Note. Sorry I won’t be able to post the Paris photos here, but I don’t think I can do that unless I am posting a new blog, and even then, the number is limited.
    I hope to post some Paris photos today and to soon get up the next installment in the tour blog. Also I am making ready soon to put up the Prologue and first chapter of Lionheart on my website. Meanwhile, on this date in 1483, Richard accepted the crown and after his coronation on July 6th, became the third Richard to rule England since the Conquest. Also the last Richard; it may be the name seemed unlucky, since all three Richards died violently. Well, we don’t know precisely how Richard II died, but it certainly seems highly probable that he was murdered. I always found it interesting to see how regicide became more “acceptable” as time went by. The Empress Maude would have been crowned and thus England’s first queen ruler had she and her supporters announced that poor Stephen had died of a sudden, convenient chill. But royal murder was still beyond the pale, and Stephen lived to be freed when his queen traded Maude’s brother Robert for him. In the same way, as ruthless a man as Henry I (who had the noses of two of his own granddaughters cut off),confined his brother Robert of Normandy in a castle (Cardiff, I think?) for nigh on thirty years. I think John’s action in killing Arthur, though shocking at the time, was the first step along the path that would result in the assassinations of Edward II, Richard II, and Henry VI. And of course when the Tudors came along, they elevated murder to an art form.

  2. Ah, so this is where it was. I wrote on the many deaths of yesterday in a comment on the previous blog entry:
    Yesterday, a horrendous man, Simon de Montfort (‘our’ Simon’s father) was finally killed, his head crushed by a stone from a mangonel, and even that was too merciful. In addition, Eleanor of Provence, Henry III’s [IV] wife and mother of Edward Longshanks, died, and Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, was executed.

  3. Wow, Koby, yesteday was busy day in history, wasn’t it? It was very interesting to see that blank spot on the wall of the cathedral of St Nazaire in Carcassonne; Simon sr’s son took his father’s body home for reburial, probably a wise decision. Thanks for this interesting information; I’ll post it on Facebook, too, with credit due to you, of course.

  4. Sharon-
    I hadn’t realized that Henry I did all of those terrible things. Do you (or any of your readers) have any recommendations on books about him? I’d like to include them in my challenge. Thanks!

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