King John was not a good man: two distinguished historians echo A.A. Milne

King John: England, Magna Carta and the Making of a Tyrant Stephen Church

Macmillan, pp.311, £25

King John: Treachery, Tyranny and the Road to Magna Carta Marc Morris

Hutchinson, pp.346, £25

This being the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta, it is not surprising that there should be two new biographies of King John; not surprising either that one should be billed as ‘The Making of a Tyrant’, the other as a story of ‘Treachery’ and ‘Tyranny’. King John has long been regarded as the worst English king: cruel, deceitful, avaricious, untrustworthy, incapable and cowardly.

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TaggedBiography, Book review - medieval history, Henry II the Angevin empire, Magna Carta, normandy, Richard I

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King John was not a good man: two distinguished historians echo A.A. Milne

Allan Massie finds that King John’s reputation goes from bad to worse - and that Richard III seems a paragon by comparison

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