No English king has suffered a worse press than King John: but how to
disentangle legend and reality? The youngest of the five sons of Henry
II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, the empire builders of the Angevin dynasty,
John had small hope of securing any significant inheritance. Then, in
1199, on the death of his older brother Richard, John took possession of
the vast Angevin lands in England and on the continent. But by his
death in 1216, he had lost almost all that he inherited, and had come
perilously close to losing his English kingdom, too. Drawing on
thousands of contemporary sources, Stephen Church tells John's story -
from boyhood and the succession crises of his early adulthood, to
accession, rebellion and civil war. In doing so, he reveals exactly why
John's reign went so disastrously wrong and how John's failure led to
the great cornerstone of Britain's constitution: Magna Carta. Vivid and
authoritative, King John: England, Magna Carta and the Making of a
Tyrant is history at its visceral best.
