Richard II
Subtitle: A Brittle Glory
Publisher: Penguin Books, Limited
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 144
ISBN-13: 9780141979892
Subjects: Richard ii, king of england, 1367-1400; Great britain, history; Great britain, biography
Description: Richard II (1377-99) came to the throne as a child, following the long, domineering, martial reign of his grandfather Edward III. He suffered from the disastrous combination of a most exalted sense of his own 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 before finally succumbing to a coup, imprisonment and murder. Laura Ashe's brilliant account of his reign emphasizes the strange gap between Richard's personal incapacity and the amazing cultural legacy of his reign - from the Wilton Diptych to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Piers Plowman and The Canterbury Tales.