Client details
Dr Ian Mortimer
| James Gill | Assistant: Lara Hughes Young +44 (0) 20 3214 0887 |
| Dr Mortimer has BA and PhD degrees in history from Exeter University and an MA in archive studies from University College London. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1998.
Ian was awarded the Alexander Prize by the Royal Historical Society for his work on the social history of medicine in 2004. He lives with his wife and three children on the edge of Dartmoor. For more information about Ian and his work, please visit www.ianmortimer.com
Henry V is regarded as the great English hero. Lionized in his own day for his victory at Agincourt, his piety and his rigorous application of justice, he was elevated by Shakespeare into a champion of English nationalism for all future generations. But what was he really like? Does he deserve to be thought of as 'the greatest man who ever ruled England?'. In this groundbreaking and ambitious book, Ian Mortimer portrays Henry in the pivotal year of his reign. Recording the dramatic events of 1415 on a day-by-day basis, he offers the fullest, most precise and least romanticized view we have of Henry and what he did. The result is not only a fascinating reappraisal of Henry; it brings to the fore many unpalatable truths which biographers and military historians have largely ignored. While Henry retains the essential qualities of his greatness, his legend is stripped of its Shakespearean rhetoric and compassion. At the center of the book is the campaign which culminated in the battle of Agincourt: a slaughter ground designed not to advance England's interests directly but to demonstrate God's approval of Henry's royal authority on both sides of the Channel. 1415 was a year of religious persecution, personal suffering and one horrendous battle. This is the story of that year, as seen over the shoulder of its most cold-hearted, most ambitious and most celebrated hero. "Compelling, exuberant and erudite, combining the vivid drama of medieval character and battle with the vigour of revisionist history". Simon Sebag-Montefiore “The Devon archivist and author of the bestselling The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England has virtually single-handedly put medieval history back in the ordinary readers, combining scrupulous research with a wonderfully iconoclastic approach to storytelling ... Mortimer brings alive what it was actually like to be king ... his approach genuinely works everything is in context, nothing is left out ... More than any other historian he gives us a genuinely three-dimensional portrait of a man who was of his times but came to transcend them.” Dominic Sandbrook, Daily Telegraph “Shakespeare’s heroic version of Henry V is very different from the portrait of the late medieval English king who emerges from Ian Mortimer’s sparkling revisionist study ... Mortimer never fails to be perceptive, challenging of orthodox opinions, and supremely readable.” Christopher Silvester, Daily Express “Mortimer writes biographical history with formidable energy and panache ... His method is an enthralling experiment in time-travel: this book takes the year of Agincourt a day at a time, building an in-depth picture of how those who lived through it experienced events. At times it reads like a novel, at times it offers subtly nuanced back story ... This is the most illuminating exploration of the reality of 15th-century life that I have ever read.” Christina Hardyment, Independent “Mortimer makes a new and convincing likeness of medieval England’s most iconic king.” Sunday Times “Bold ... new and unexpected” “There have been dozens of books about King Henry but this latest, by the noted medieval historian Ian Mortimer, seeks to reappraise his reputation by looking at the events of 1415, the pivotal year of his reign ... the most complete view of Henry we have seen.”
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1415 
The Fears of Henry IV 
The Perfect King
| Publication Details | Notes |
|---|---|
| THE TIME TRAVELLER'S GUIDE TO MEDIEVAL ENGLAND: A HANDBOOK FOR VISITORS TO THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 2008 VINTAGE | The past is a foreign country: this is your guidebook. Imagine you could get into a time machine and travel back to the fourteenth century. What would you see? What would you smell? More to the point, where are you going to stay? Should you go to a castle or a monastic guesthouse? And what are you going to eat? What sort of food are you going to be offered by a peasant or a monk or a lord? This radical new approach turns our entire understanding of history upside down. It shows us that the past is not just something to be studied; it is also something to be lived. It sets out to explain what life was like in the most immediate way, through taking you, the reader, to the middle ages, and showing you everything from the horrors of leprosy and war to the ridiculous excesses of roasted larks and haute couture. Being a guidebook, many questions are answered which do not normally occur in traditional history books. How do you greet people in the street? What should you use for toilet paper? How fast - and how safely - can you travel? Why might a physician want to taste your blood? And how do you test to see if you are going down with the plague? The result is the most astonishing social history book you are ever likely to read: revolutionary in its concept, informative and entertaining in its detail, and startling for its portrayal of humanity in an age of violence, exuberance and fear. |
| THE FEARS OF HENRY IV: THE LIFE OF ENGLAND'S SELF-MADE KING 2007 JONATHAN CAPE | In June 1405, King Henry IV stopped at a small Yorkshire manor house to shelter from a storm. That night he awoke screaming that traitors were burning his skin. His instinctive belief that he was being poisoned was understandable: he had already survived at least eight plots to dethrone or kill him in the first six years of his reign. In 1399, at the age of thirty-two, he was enthusiastically greeted as the saviour of the realm when he ousted from power the insecure and tyrannical King Richard II. But therein lay Henry's weakness.In making himself king he had broken God's law and left himself starkly open to criticism. He had to contend with men who supported him only as long as they could control him; when they failed, they plotted to kill him. Such overwhelming threats transformed him from a hero into a duplicitous murderer: a king prepared to go to any lengths to save his family and his throne. That legacy of unrest has almost entirely obscured him. Shakespeare was forced to downplay his achievements, and instead to present his adversary Richard II as the wronged man. But what Henry actually provoked was a social revolution as much as a political one. Against all the odds, he took a poorly ruled nation, established a new Lancastrian dynasty, and introduced the principle that a king must act in accordance with parliament. He might not have been the most glorious king England ever had, but he was one of the bravest, and certainly the greatest survivor of them all. |
| THE PERFECT KING: THE LIFE OF EDWARD III, FATHER OF THE ENGLISH NATION 2006 JONATHAN CAPE | He ordered his uncle to be beheaded; he usurped his father's throneand; he started a war which lasted for more than a hundred years and he taxed his people more than any other previous king. Yet for centuries Edward III was celebrated as the most brilliant king England had ever had, and three hundred years after his death it was said that his kingship was perhaps the greatest that the world had ever known. In this first full study of the man's character and life, Ian Mortimer shows how Edward personally provided the impetus for much of the drama of his fifty-year reign. Nineteenth century historians saw in Edward the opportunity to decry a warmonger, and painted him as a self-seeking, rapacious, tax-gathering conqueror. Yet as this book shows, beneath the strong warrior king was a compassionate, conscientious and often merciful man - resolute yet devoted to his wife, friends and family. He emerges as a strikingly modern figure, to whom many will be able to relate - the father of both the English nation and the English people. |
| THE GREATEST TRAITOR: THE LIFE OF SIR ROGER MORTIMER, RULER OF ENGLAND 1327 - 1330 2003 JONATHAN CAPE | One night in August 1323 a captive rebel baron, Sir Roger Mortimer, drugged his guards and escaped from the Tower of London. With the king's men-at-arms in pursuit he fled to the south coast, and sailed to France. There he was joined by Isabella, the Queen of England, who threw herself into his arms. A year later, as lovers, they returned with an invading army: King Edward II's forces crumbled before them, and Mortimer took power. He removed Edward II in the first deposition of a monarch in British history. Then the ex-king was apparently murdered, some said with a red-hot poker, in Berkeley Castle. Brutal, intelligent, passionate, profligate, imaginative and violent: Sir Roger Mortimer was an extraordinary character. It is not surprising that the queen lost her heart to him. Nor is it surprising that his contemporaries were terrified of him. But until now no one has appreciated the full evil genius of the man. This first biography reveals not only the man's career as a feudal lord, a governor of Ireland, a rebel leader and a dictator of England but also the truth of what happened that night in Berkeley Castle. |
