The Hundred Years War Trial By Battle (the Middle Ages Series, Volume 1) [Paperback]

A History Book Club selection

A former history fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, Jonathan Sumption is the author of The Hundred Years War, Volume 2: Trial by Fire, The Hundred Years War, Volume 3: Divided Houses, and The Hundred Years War, Volume 4: Cursed Kings, all available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Without any doubt, this book immediately takes its place as the best available account of this phase of the war. . . . It is compulsively readable, in part the consequence of a lucid style and apt choice of detail, but mainly the result of a masterly overall grasp, acute judgment, fresh insight, and a compelling sense of immediacy that fully justifies the author's preference for a predominantly narrative approach. Throughout, there is a sense of a luminous intelligence working on the material. —History

A superb narrative history. —Military History

This will become a standard account of the War. —Choice

In a balanced and seamless presentation, the origins and first decade of the Hundred Years' War unfold before the reader. —American Historical Review

A rich book, filled with detail and incident, yet never losing a sense of the overall sweep of events. —Times Literary Supplement