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Bows Against the Barons
A retelling of the legend of Robin Hood: an adolescent boy joins an outlaw band which harbors resentment of the feudal elite.
152 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1934
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About the author
Geoffrey Trease
174 books25 followersRobert Geoffrey Trease (1909-1998) was a prolific writer, publishing 113 books between 1934 (Bows Against the Barons) and 1997 (Cloak for a Spy). His work has been translated into 20 languages. His grandfather was a historian, and was one of the main influences towards Trease's work.
He is best known for writing children's historical novels, whose content reflects his insistence on historically correct backgrounds, which he meticulously researched. However, with his ground-breaking study Tales Out of School (1949), he was also a pioneer of the idea that children's literature should be a serious subject for study and debate. When he began his career, his radical viewpoint was a change from the conventional and often jingoistic tone of most children's literature of the time, and he was one of the first authors who deliberately set out to appeal to both boys and girls and to feature strong leading characters of both sexes.
He is best known for writing children's historical novels, whose content reflects his insistence on historically correct backgrounds, which he meticulously researched. However, with his ground-breaking study Tales Out of School (1949), he was also a pioneer of the idea that children's literature should be a serious subject for study and debate. When he began his career, his radical viewpoint was a change from the conventional and often jingoistic tone of most children's literature of the time, and he was one of the first authors who deliberately set out to appeal to both boys and girls and to feature strong leading characters of both sexes.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
December 6, 2025
I last read this book over fifty years ago. As a Robin Hood story I loved it at the time. It was so different from Errol Flynn fighting Basil Rathbone, or dear old Richard Greene giving Robin an English public school voice in the black and white TV series. The background barely registers as medieval England. It is as distorted as the version in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, only not made for comic effect.
Young Dickon kills a deer in the royal forest and only just manages to escape the Sheriff's justice by fleeing into Sherwood and seeking the sanctuary of Robin Hood's band of outlaws. Only they are not a band of outlaws any more. The Merry Men have been morphed into the Garrulous Guerillas, the hard core of Robin's revolution. The usual sort of greenwood adventures follow for Dickon as Robin Hood builds his plan to raise a proletarian army from the peasantry that will trounce the Norman overlords in a mighty battle.
The battle takes place with Robin and his followers fighting heroically. In one splendid scene Robin rouses his troops with a stirring speech worthy of declamation before the gates of the Winter Palace in 1917 and being delivered beneath an unfurled red banner. All does not go well. I am unable to provide a spoiler as that is the point when my memory lets me down. Perhaps Robin ends up firing an arrow through a window while lying on his deathbed with instructions to bury him wherever it lands. Who knows? And does young Dickon grow up to be a middle-aged Dickon? My mind is a blank.
The story is not history as we know it. It was never meant to be. When the book was written Trease was a very strident socialist who wanted the world changed and Robin was his mouthpiece and exemplar as a revolutionist. Thankfully Trease was also a talented author for the young in the making, which makes it all readable.
Young Dickon kills a deer in the royal forest and only just manages to escape the Sheriff's justice by fleeing into Sherwood and seeking the sanctuary of Robin Hood's band of outlaws. Only they are not a band of outlaws any more. The Merry Men have been morphed into the Garrulous Guerillas, the hard core of Robin's revolution. The usual sort of greenwood adventures follow for Dickon as Robin Hood builds his plan to raise a proletarian army from the peasantry that will trounce the Norman overlords in a mighty battle.
The battle takes place with Robin and his followers fighting heroically. In one splendid scene Robin rouses his troops with a stirring speech worthy of declamation before the gates of the Winter Palace in 1917 and being delivered beneath an unfurled red banner. All does not go well. I am unable to provide a spoiler as that is the point when my memory lets me down. Perhaps Robin ends up firing an arrow through a window while lying on his deathbed with instructions to bury him wherever it lands. Who knows? And does young Dickon grow up to be a middle-aged Dickon? My mind is a blank.
The story is not history as we know it. It was never meant to be. When the book was written Trease was a very strident socialist who wanted the world changed and Robin was his mouthpiece and exemplar as a revolutionist. Thankfully Trease was also a talented author for the young in the making, which makes it all readable.
March 21, 2020
When Dickon kills one of the king's deer, the young Saxon peasant boy knows that punishment will be swift and severe. Fleeing to the safety of Sherwood Forest, he joins the band of the outlaw Robin Hood, and soon finds himself involved in a series of exciting adventures, from carrying a coded message into Nottingham, to spying in the court of his former master, Sir Rolf D'Eyncourt. But Robin, not content to be a forest robber, has a vision for a new society, and soon the outlaws of Sherwood are leading a great rebellion...
Originally published in 1934, and revised in 1966, Bows Against the Barons was Geoffrey Trease's first book, and it is - as the author himself acknowledges in his afterword - a young man's story. The style is sometimes a little immature - the Sheriff of Nottingham actually twirls his mustaches at one point - and the tone rather anachronistic. Characters scoff at various aspects of medieval society - religious pilgrims, for instance - in a manner that feels very modern. The great conflict is not, as is so often the case in retellings of the Robin Hood legend, between Normans and Saxons, but between "masters and men," have and have-nots. In fact, Trease continually emphasizes this point, using language and ideas that would seem more appropriate in a story set in the industrialized world.
Of course, the Robin Hood legend is one that lends itself to many kinds of rebellion, continually reinvented and perennially relevant, so it should come as no surprise that this retelling seems heavily influenced by the inequities and social unrest of its own time. Trease's tale, more historical fiction than fantastic fairytale, is well-told and exciting, whatever his stylistic weaknesses. The reader feels invested in Dickon himself, and although some of the Sherwood folk (Marian, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlet) are mentioned only in passing, Robin himself emerges as a charismatic leader and revolutionary thinker. Bows Against the Barons may not make my list of favorites, but it is definitely an enjoyable addition to my Robin Hood shelf!
Originally published in 1934, and revised in 1966, Bows Against the Barons was Geoffrey Trease's first book, and it is - as the author himself acknowledges in his afterword - a young man's story. The style is sometimes a little immature - the Sheriff of Nottingham actually twirls his mustaches at one point - and the tone rather anachronistic. Characters scoff at various aspects of medieval society - religious pilgrims, for instance - in a manner that feels very modern. The great conflict is not, as is so often the case in retellings of the Robin Hood legend, between Normans and Saxons, but between "masters and men," have and have-nots. In fact, Trease continually emphasizes this point, using language and ideas that would seem more appropriate in a story set in the industrialized world.
Of course, the Robin Hood legend is one that lends itself to many kinds of rebellion, continually reinvented and perennially relevant, so it should come as no surprise that this retelling seems heavily influenced by the inequities and social unrest of its own time. Trease's tale, more historical fiction than fantastic fairytale, is well-told and exciting, whatever his stylistic weaknesses. The reader feels invested in Dickon himself, and although some of the Sherwood folk (Marian, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlet) are mentioned only in passing, Robin himself emerges as a charismatic leader and revolutionary thinker. Bows Against the Barons may not make my list of favorites, but it is definitely an enjoyable addition to my Robin Hood shelf!
September 23, 2018
A youth novel about Robin Hood, with remarkable historical accuracy about its scenery. It is clearly based on the historical city of Nottingham and gives the legendary fight for justice a hands-on and realistic objective. The narrator is a young fictive character invented for the purpose of this specific story, typically leaving his poor and oppressed life to join the freedom fighters. It did make me look at the entire saga from a new, refreshing perspective, though... Knowing quite a few variants already, I was pleasantly surprised by reading this one!
January 6, 2015
A simple read, but a good one. The author Geoffrey Trease imagines a slightly more realistic Robin Hood and Sherwood forest seen through the eyes of a young lad, Dickon who falls in with them. A somewhat bittersweet ending (if you know the legends of Robin Hood, you'll know the nature of it) but still an enjoyable little read. It's the sort of book I would give to a son one day.
March 1, 2018
Rounded up from four and 1/2 stars.
Recently re-read as an antidote to some issues of the Aldine RH Library I've been reading. The following review is from Dec 2012.
While I have a lot of time for Geoffrey Trease’s Bows Against the Barons (Martin Lawrence Ltd. London. 1934) it is a far from perfect radical version of the legend. I don’t know if Trease was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain or just a fellow traveller. I suspect it was the former given that Bows was put out by the CPGB’s publishing arm and the illustrator Michael Boland was official cartoonist for the CPGB papers.
Bows was published towards the end of the disastrous Third Period. That is the ultra-left class-against-class political line imposed on the international communist movement by Stalin between 1928 and 1934. And some of that politics does taint Bows in that it is anachronistic and crude ie heavy-handed. But at the same time it is filled with sentiment’s that one cannot fault. For example here is RH at a feast in Sherwood: “An end of tolls and taxes! The land for the peasants and the town for the workers! No more castles, no more hired cut-throats in livery, no more war service, no barons, no bishops, no king!” and “It won’t be easy, comrades – if it was, we’d have done it long ago. It takes years to persuade men, to show them the one truth – that there are only two classes, masters and men, haves and have-nots. Everything else – Normans and Saxons, Christian and Saracen, peasant and craftsman – is a means of keeping us apart, of keeping the masters on top”(p.98). Reading that you forget Bows, as it says on the cover, is a Robin Hood for Boys and Girls!
The time period of Bows is suitably vague – there is a Crusade in progress which the unnamed king may or may not be participating but it is a completely fictitious Duke of Wessex that puts down the revolt. RH’s treacherous death at Kirklees is repaid with the priory being burnt to the ground – a touch I like. Bows was a much needed counterbalance, not only to the many jingoistic retellings of RH but of much children’s literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I keep thinking I should pick up a later de-radicalised edition to compare the two but I don’t know … I think the original deserves the spot on the bookshelf.
Recently re-read as an antidote to some issues of the Aldine RH Library I've been reading. The following review is from Dec 2012.
While I have a lot of time for Geoffrey Trease’s Bows Against the Barons (Martin Lawrence Ltd. London. 1934) it is a far from perfect radical version of the legend. I don’t know if Trease was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain or just a fellow traveller. I suspect it was the former given that Bows was put out by the CPGB’s publishing arm and the illustrator Michael Boland was official cartoonist for the CPGB papers.
Bows was published towards the end of the disastrous Third Period. That is the ultra-left class-against-class political line imposed on the international communist movement by Stalin between 1928 and 1934. And some of that politics does taint Bows in that it is anachronistic and crude ie heavy-handed. But at the same time it is filled with sentiment’s that one cannot fault. For example here is RH at a feast in Sherwood: “An end of tolls and taxes! The land for the peasants and the town for the workers! No more castles, no more hired cut-throats in livery, no more war service, no barons, no bishops, no king!” and “It won’t be easy, comrades – if it was, we’d have done it long ago. It takes years to persuade men, to show them the one truth – that there are only two classes, masters and men, haves and have-nots. Everything else – Normans and Saxons, Christian and Saracen, peasant and craftsman – is a means of keeping us apart, of keeping the masters on top”(p.98). Reading that you forget Bows, as it says on the cover, is a Robin Hood for Boys and Girls!
The time period of Bows is suitably vague – there is a Crusade in progress which the unnamed king may or may not be participating but it is a completely fictitious Duke of Wessex that puts down the revolt. RH’s treacherous death at Kirklees is repaid with the priory being burnt to the ground – a touch I like. Bows was a much needed counterbalance, not only to the many jingoistic retellings of RH but of much children’s literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I keep thinking I should pick up a later de-radicalised edition to compare the two but I don’t know … I think the original deserves the spot on the bookshelf.
November 5, 2020
I dug this old one out of my library, where it has lain for decades since I last read it in the early 1970s.
This is a children's classic. It was first a best seller in the Soviet Union. Why? Because it was written consciously as a communist interpretation of the Robin Hood legend. Trease approached the Communist Party of the UK with the proposal, they liked it and it was published with their help. Trease was quite open about this, although in later life acknowledged that he was naive at the time he wrote the book (being just 25). In fairness, he had been brought up on a pabulum of British Empire derring-do supporting the basic equation of mPah: White = Might = Right. So, during times when communism was popular amongst the Left as a bulwark against the truly frightening spawning of fascist regimes across Europe in the 1930s, Trease's views become understandable.
As a book, Bows Against the Barons is an entertaining, rather superficial adventure, the blatant political slant removing much of what limited conviction it achieves. It is not in the league of Treasure Island, with its intense characterisations and atmospheres of place. The battle scenes are not particularly detailed or convincing, there is a complete absence of profounder emotional development in the central character Dickon, despite all his experiences of deadly subterfuge and killing grown men. It's par with Enid Blyton.
This is a children's classic. It was first a best seller in the Soviet Union. Why? Because it was written consciously as a communist interpretation of the Robin Hood legend. Trease approached the Communist Party of the UK with the proposal, they liked it and it was published with their help. Trease was quite open about this, although in later life acknowledged that he was naive at the time he wrote the book (being just 25). In fairness, he had been brought up on a pabulum of British Empire derring-do supporting the basic equation of mPah: White = Might = Right. So, during times when communism was popular amongst the Left as a bulwark against the truly frightening spawning of fascist regimes across Europe in the 1930s, Trease's views become understandable.
As a book, Bows Against the Barons is an entertaining, rather superficial adventure, the blatant political slant removing much of what limited conviction it achieves. It is not in the league of Treasure Island, with its intense characterisations and atmospheres of place. The battle scenes are not particularly detailed or convincing, there is a complete absence of profounder emotional development in the central character Dickon, despite all his experiences of deadly subterfuge and killing grown men. It's par with Enid Blyton.
February 26, 2018
This is fascinating. It’s the first of Trease’s historical stories for children, a genre that he would make his own, and it has all the immediacy and colour of his later books. But the politics are very crude; the outlaws sound as though they’re members of the socialist Sunday Schools that were around in the 1930s in Britain. No female characters with speaking parts; Trease definitely improves there as he gets older. I’m glad I read it, but I don’t think I’ll reread it, unlike others of his books that I first read as a child and still reread with enjoyment.
October 15, 2025
My kids are both teenagers, but luckily I still get to read to them every week. We just finished "Bows Against The Barons" by Geoffrey Trease. An excellent revolutionary retelling of Robin Hood from 1934. Highly recommended.
May 11, 2019
Trease's earliest book - a nice read although not as well written as his later pieces.
August 14, 2021
A good quick read.
February 15, 2025
This was one of my favourite books when I was a boy. I loved anything about Robin Hood.
November 12, 2025
Robin Hood. Nine year old me really liked this retelling of a classic story. Well written and easy to read.
June 16, 2024
Am not that well acquainted with the tale of Robin Hood but this book from what I've consumed is the most realistic and most human. The story itself is a simple and linear enough adventure, and although it shows its age in the writing on the third act when I could barely follow on the final showdown (a me problem) the rest of the book was easy enough to read. Despite that sad ending though, it still brought on over beyond the pages of the book the hopeful sentiment that England shall soon be ruled by no masters. Down with the monarchy !!!!!!!
November 28, 2017
When I was eleven and in my last year of primary school we were supposed to borrow a book from the library each week, read it and then write a review, stating what sort of book it was, outlining the story and saying whether we liked it. There were probably many ways of getting out of it but I did it conscientiously. And I remember all my books were historical adventures and Geoffrey Trease was one of the authors I read (but there was also Henry Treece, to make things confusing). I’m not sure if this is one of the ones I read, but it was on the bookshelves of a house I was staying last week so I read it...a nostalgic revisiting of old times. As a piece of literature it is in the tradition of Walter Scott historical romance but reduced to little more than narrative – but the narrative does romp along, one thing after another: the sort of thing that would have kept me happy when I was eleven. Dickon, the 16 year old protagonist (although he often seems a few years younger), kills a deer and flees to Sherwood Forest where he meets up with Robin Hood and his outlaws. I find the romantic depiction of outlaws fascinating: our law abiding society glamorises the criminal...we can wonder why that is. But the Robin Hood legend was sentimentalized by the Victorians, Robin became a nobleman, he is loyal to the Good King, etc. Trease tries to get rid of all the soft stuff and I find the background to the book remarkable, especially for a children’s book: Robin Hood becomes political, he leads a peasant rebellion, there are calls for the peasants and town workers to unite, there are shouts of down with the barons, down with the King, anti-clericism is the norm...Trease’s socialism is obvious and Robin Hood becomes a guerrilla fighter. But this remains a boys’ book: it’s the men who do things: other than the evil Prioress at the end (and maybe she’s wicked because of her class, not because she’s a woman), there is only one line of dialogue given to a woman, otherwise the peasant women just mill about in the background. And there is an ease about the violence: the outlaws and the peasants fight the soldiers, but Dickon’s learning to kill without moral qualm is a bit disturbing...but such is the action adventure story.
November 26, 2016
Technically, some of the ideas here are interesting but it just wasn't that interesting to read. I also found out afterwards that the author was intentionally working against normal Robin Hood-vibes (basically: WHY WAS EVERYTHING SO HAPPY WHEN THE WORLD SUCKED*) which...worked, but again, didn't make it very enjoyable. I don't read Robin Hood for peasant revolts and castle attacks. It was also weird that all you had to do was hand a peasant armor and voila, they were good at this. ??? I was never fully on board with Robin Hood the anarchist. (that's probably not what was intended but it was sure how he sounded.) Even typing that I can see how it /would/ possibly work, but maybe when it does it is destined to bore me. Eh.
*I've always thought that having joy in spite of the problems of the world was a really cool thing about Robin Hood.
*I've always thought that having joy in spite of the problems of the world was a really cool thing about Robin Hood.
September 20, 2011
This is very well written and conjures up the period very well at first. It's exciting and readable. But the author recasts Robin Hood as wanting to rebel against the king and overthrow the English caste system. He even uses the term "workers" for the peasants and the skilled workmen. So I wasn't too surprised to find out that the book had been published in the mid-1930s originally. The political slant of the author led him to more and more anachronisms; I was almost expecting the Merry Men to break into the Internationale at some point. I felt annoyed at the appropriation of the Robin Hood story for his soap box.
May 8, 2016
'We shall build the New England, the England of equality and freedom - Merrie England at last!'
I heard Michael Rosen talk about this book many years ago and have wanted to read it since.
Trease wrote this children's novel in the early 1930s and its political context inhabits every page. Trease re-invents Robin as a socialist leader pitted against the tyranny of the rich (Normans and Saxons). His message: the weak enslave themselves and injustice must be fought wherever it is found. Messages that are possibly relevant today...
I heard Michael Rosen talk about this book many years ago and have wanted to read it since.
Trease wrote this children's novel in the early 1930s and its political context inhabits every page. Trease re-invents Robin as a socialist leader pitted against the tyranny of the rich (Normans and Saxons). His message: the weak enslave themselves and injustice must be fought wherever it is found. Messages that are possibly relevant today...
August 12, 2013
A very frank story looking at the tale of Robin Hood and his not so merrie men
April 28, 2015
This is the first edition. Trease made many changes to the language in subsequent editions but this one is very much of its time
August 2, 2022
um pouco lento
July 12, 2009
Warning! Serious downer ending!
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews