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Penguin History of Britain #4
The Hollow Crown: A History of Britain in the Late Middle Ages
There is no more haunting, compelling period in Britain's history than the later middle ages. The extraordinary kings - Edward III and Henry V, the great warriors, Richard II and Henry VI, tragic inadequates killed by their failure to use their power, and Richard III, the demon king. The extraordinary events - the Black Death that destroyed a third of the population, the Peasants' Revolt, the Wars of the Roses, the Battle of Agincourt. The extraordinary artistic achievements - the great churches, castles and tombs that still dominate the landscape, the birth of the English language in The Canterbury Tales. For the first time in a generation, a historian has had the vision and confidence to write a spell-binding account of the era immortalised by Shakespeare's history plays. The Hollow Crown brilliantly brings to life for the reader a world we have long lost - a strange, Catholic, rural country of monks, peasants, knights and merchants, almost perpetually at war - but continues to define so much of England's national myth.
380 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
35 people are currently reading
933 people want to read
About the author
Miri Rubin
27 books19 followersMiri Rubin (born 1956) is a medieval historian who is Professor of Early Modern History at Queen Mary University of London. She was educated at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Cambridge, where she gained her doctorate and was later awarded a research fellowship and a post-doctoral research fellowship at Girton College. Rubin studies the social and religious history of Europe between 1100 and 1500, concentrating on the interactions between public rituals, power, and community life.
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December 28, 2019This story stops at 1485. Historians have claimed that a 'new monarchy arose with the coming of Henry VII, that a new age was inaugurated, vigorous in administration, ambitious in its European and global performance. But wise readers should be wary of the 'new'...'New' is so often an adjective spun by professional illusionists, the makers of political slogans. While appreciating the verve of the 'new' politics, the reader will stop and ask whether it is not above all the fantasy of shapers of opinions - servants of power itself - which historians have been eager to endorse. Most change, deep change, occurs more slowly, experimentally, cautiously and through deliberation. It thus often goes unnoticed by those who live it and make it happen. (p.322)
An impression of those slow, deep changes occurring from the reign of Edward II to that of Richard III is built up in Miri Rubin's book through a succession of short subsections each concentrating on a different topic, politics, the countryside, towns, the law, books, the church at a particular point in time. So we have a series of snapshots of aspects of life in every chapter.
Rubin uses sources to good effect to give us a taste of this earlier world. Whether that be the problems an Anchorite had, unhappy with her vow she took to wandering about, but was forgiven by her bishop, a case of abduction in response to a claim of impotency, or the cases coming before ecclesiastical courts which were overwhelmingly concerned with relationship problems: fornication, adultery, brutality, improper marriage, promises to marry and the like. All of this gives the text intimacy, a sense of real lives and even at times how life varied in different parts of England.
Here is a problem. The subtitle of the book is "A History of Britain in the Late Middle Ages" and it is marketed as part of the Penguin History of Britain series but it is a history of England. Scotland appears when relevant: to be victorious at Bannockburn, invade Ireland and plunder northern England but then disappears for a hundred odd pages. Ireland, part of the Lordship of England, gets a bit more detail as Edward III's son introduces legislation into the Irish Parliament to separate 'English' and 'Irish' populations, despite which 'English' lords still retain the services of 'Irish' poets and Kerns. The parts of France which were also part of the Lordship of England don't feature, Wales gets some attention, but it is easy to imagine a much longer book, one perhaps that even had space to focus on the English regions.
Indeed the overall problem and joy of this book is that each subsection, occasionally even paragraphs, could be extended into a book length study itself. The sexuality of Edward II, Richard II and the image of Kingship, or the death of Edward V and his brother in the Tower, are all examples of this. But there is an essay on further reading in addition to the references in the body of the text to Froissart, Chaucer, Langland, Gower, Margery Kempe and the Paston Letters.
The challenge with a book like this is to reflect something of the breadth of the field, of the available sources, of what could be studied and explored as well as providing an enjoyable overview from Edward II to the Battle of Bosworth. It is a stylish attempt at an impossible task.
An impression of those slow, deep changes occurring from the reign of Edward II to that of Richard III is built up in Miri Rubin's book through a succession of short subsections each concentrating on a different topic, politics, the countryside, towns, the law, books, the church at a particular point in time. So we have a series of snapshots of aspects of life in every chapter.
Rubin uses sources to good effect to give us a taste of this earlier world. Whether that be the problems an Anchorite had, unhappy with her vow she took to wandering about, but was forgiven by her bishop, a case of abduction in response to a claim of impotency, or the cases coming before ecclesiastical courts which were overwhelmingly concerned with relationship problems: fornication, adultery, brutality, improper marriage, promises to marry and the like. All of this gives the text intimacy, a sense of real lives and even at times how life varied in different parts of England.
Here is a problem. The subtitle of the book is "A History of Britain in the Late Middle Ages" and it is marketed as part of the Penguin History of Britain series but it is a history of England. Scotland appears when relevant: to be victorious at Bannockburn, invade Ireland and plunder northern England but then disappears for a hundred odd pages. Ireland, part of the Lordship of England, gets a bit more detail as Edward III's son introduces legislation into the Irish Parliament to separate 'English' and 'Irish' populations, despite which 'English' lords still retain the services of 'Irish' poets and Kerns. The parts of France which were also part of the Lordship of England don't feature, Wales gets some attention, but it is easy to imagine a much longer book, one perhaps that even had space to focus on the English regions.
Indeed the overall problem and joy of this book is that each subsection, occasionally even paragraphs, could be extended into a book length study itself. The sexuality of Edward II, Richard II and the image of Kingship, or the death of Edward V and his brother in the Tower, are all examples of this. But there is an essay on further reading in addition to the references in the body of the text to Froissart, Chaucer, Langland, Gower, Margery Kempe and the Paston Letters.
The challenge with a book like this is to reflect something of the breadth of the field, of the available sources, of what could be studied and explored as well as providing an enjoyable overview from Edward II to the Battle of Bosworth. It is a stylish attempt at an impossible task.
March 18, 2023
Vae Terre Ubi Puer Rex Est
The Penguin History of Britain is a replacement for the Pelican History of England that came out in the 1950s and ‘60s and served as the go-to source for accessible multivolume British history. They are also in competition with Oxford’s New History of England, which covers the same subject for a (slightly) more rigorous audience using similarly respected scholars. I’m starting my review off with this fact because I’m reading through the series in order and my opinions of the books will depend both on how well they stand up as individual volumes as well as how they fare as part of the broader series.
Of all the books in the Penguin History of Britain that I’ve read so far, this one probably manages to get the best balance between political/military narrative and a more cultural history. The book tries to cover as wide a range of topics as possible and organizes them within the narrative framework. I am strongly in favor of such an approach with introductory texts. Narratives give the sense of progression and change necessary to keep a reader’s interest while thematic topics do much of the heavy lifting and establish the feel of an era. The reigns of individual kings determine the division of chapters, although it makes a slight effort to obscure this. Chapter titles like “Plague and War” or “Famine and Deposition” are describing real enough events but they are a façade for (in this case) the reigns of Edward III and Richard II. Given that the book is divided up this way certain periods get covered in greater depth than others. The chapter on Richard II, for example, covers 22 years in 57 pages while Edward III’s eventful reign of 47 years only gets a single page more.
While the book does well in establishing this balance, it really struggles to make its chosen topics work. The narrative sections are particularly grim. Take the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. We start off sensibly enough with an introduction to the revolt. We’re then immediately told the name is a misnomer as it wasn’t led by peasants nor was it a revolt (but who and what was it then?), we read something of the revoltees’ motives (which really could have been explained earlier), some aspects of their march are outlined, Wat Tyler’s death is mentioned, and then we go back to the goals of the movement and what they did before discussing the meaning of their actual actions and then the aftermath. You’d never guess from this that Wat Tyler’s death signaled the collapse of the rebellion! What happened to the rebels after they were led away from London? Who opposed them and why? How did Londoners (who she said were the main force in the revolt) fit in? Richard’s role in this is vague, even though we spend most of our time with him. I was left with the rough impression that he was somewhat sympathetic to the rebels and did all he could for them… but that’s directly contrary to what every other book I’ve read said. This feels like a iconoclastic revision of existing viewpoints, but we never hear those viewpoints nor get any negative justification for rejecting them or positive justification for an alternate view. What is being argued here?
The basic problem with the way this is approached is the total lack of chronology. The ignoring of any linear notion of cause and effect leaves a confusing muddle of an account. I read a book on Wat Tyler’s Revolt years ago (Summer of Blood, it’s very good!), but I was still puzzled about what was going on when I read it here. The problem here is that this is taking a thematic approach to an event. There are some thing she wants to say about the topic, so she groups them roughly by category and covers them one by one in no obvious order. I looked at Rubin’s bibliography, and while I haven’t read any of her other books they look to be chiefly thematic in nature. Which is fine – a lot of great books cover specific aspects of history rather than focusing on strict chronology. And indeed, nothing says you can’t mix thematic and narrative elements in the same account. But if you’re going to try to give us the story of an event it makes no sense to give a holistic account – establishing a feel for events by covering a variety of topics away from the center. We need to hear the basics of what happened before we can circle around the various issues it raised. I was left befuddled. And this is distressingly common throughout the book.
Another issue with the narrative sections is that there really isn’t much of an explanation for why events happen. The deposition of Richard II was one of the events I wanted to understand better but I can’t say I understand it any more now than I did before. I can identify the actual incidents that took place, but the reasons given (or often not) for their occurrence left me more confounded than enlightened. The conclusions are confusing and seem to rely on a set of facts or assumptions that are never stated. Events are regularly omitted (or possibly, given the issues elsewhere, mentioned out of sequence with no indication of their importance) only to have the book casually allude to their seminal nature. She states her conclusion and assumes we follow her meaning. To return to my example above, her explanation for Richard II’s fall is that he behaved more like a magnate than a king. That’s an interesting idea, but what does it mean? How does a magnate behave and what’s different with kingship? On this and many other occasions she seems to assume that making a general statement is enough and we can follow her train of thought without further information.
The book also has an awful tendency to mention events in passing before they are covered. It’s very confusing to hear of the Duke of Suffolk’s murder only to scroll back looking for it only to realize it hasn’t been mentioned yet. The opposite is sometimes true as well: Henry V’s death is only mentioned in passing after it happened when introducing the reign of his son. It simultaneously includes both too much and too little detail. Probably the best narrative section in the book is that covering the War of the Roses. Possibly because the whole conflict is notoriously confusing the book makes a real effort to rely on clear unambiguous statements with judgments whose reasoning we can understand. This section is not immune from the earlier issues – when the Duke of Gloucester is tried and executed we get a brief statement of the fact with no further details – but it does handle them substantially better.
As you might imagine from all that, the thematic sections of each chapter are rather less problematic. Without the need to provide a chronological backbone of events to get us through, the book can talk about a variety of connected aspects throughout the period. This is transparently the type of story she wanted to tell. Even here the book can be rather vague about specific facts, but the overall feel is established. It helps that confusion with one of these thematic segments need not impair your understanding of others. If you’re discussing the clergy, for example, and the section on manuals written for their education goes over your head this will not impair your ability to understand the following discussion on popular suspicions of the clergy in the same way that confusion over Richard II’s political difficulties will impede your understanding of his deposition.
Still, the fact remains that even if it doesn’t throw you completely off, some of these discussions are just as confusing as the narrative sections. Even a thematic approach needs some kind of structure, but the book tends to just wander from point to point with no obvious plan. For example, the book begins with a discussion of the Great Famine of 1315 and the official reactions to it, but almost immediately turns this into a discussion of London and its role in the economy. It’s not totally unconnected, but sometimes it feels as if the impulse for this tangent is more an excuse than a cause. Topics are chosen to give flavor, but not much binds them together. I could detect no overall thesis, either on a chapter level or for the whole book.
The last book in this series provided an excellent look at the political/military events of the time. This book feels closer to the one before that, which rejected the whole idea of a political narrative. The difficulty is that I don’t think that was deliberate. It tries to continue the political narrative, but it struggles to make sense of it. The narrative sections are far more confusing than they need to be and leave out (or include out of place) important information that you need to know to understand what’s happening. The explanations given do not provide a good guide to the motives behind events or a why things happened. Topics seem chosen at random with no clear plan to their inclusion. I think the intention was to take a holistic approach to the period, but mostly I just found myself wondering where these topics fit into the larger questions. Overall I found it a mess. I am a very experienced reader, able to work my way through sophisticated historiographical debates and explain them in simple terms. I shouldn’t be getting thrown off by an introductory text written for general audiences!
I think this is the first of Penguin’s book that I would genuinely advise people to avoid. Check out the relevant volumes of Oxford’s series (Plantagenet England 1225-1360 and Shaping The Nation: England, 1360-1461) if you want a place to start. I haven’t read any other general surveys of the period, so the rest of my recommendations will be based on specific incidents within the era. The Great Mortality is the best account I’ve found of the Black Death. The Hundred Years War: A People’s History covers the Hundred Years War (obviously) but is broader than that topic might imply. I wasn’t a big fan (plus it’s more French than English) but a lot of people seem to like Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror and it does cover most of the 14th century. The English Monarchs series offers a top-heavy biographical approach that is somewhat disparaged nowadays, but the biographies of the kings for this era (particularly Henry III, Edward I & III and Richard II – see Kendall’s biography for Richard III) do a good job of explaining their era. This is an eclectic and not very thorough list because it reflects my reading habits. That’s why I picked up this book: I wanted to gain a more general understanding of the period. I guess I shall be seeking it elsewhere.
The Penguin History of Britain is a replacement for the Pelican History of England that came out in the 1950s and ‘60s and served as the go-to source for accessible multivolume British history. They are also in competition with Oxford’s New History of England, which covers the same subject for a (slightly) more rigorous audience using similarly respected scholars. I’m starting my review off with this fact because I’m reading through the series in order and my opinions of the books will depend both on how well they stand up as individual volumes as well as how they fare as part of the broader series.
Of all the books in the Penguin History of Britain that I’ve read so far, this one probably manages to get the best balance between political/military narrative and a more cultural history. The book tries to cover as wide a range of topics as possible and organizes them within the narrative framework. I am strongly in favor of such an approach with introductory texts. Narratives give the sense of progression and change necessary to keep a reader’s interest while thematic topics do much of the heavy lifting and establish the feel of an era. The reigns of individual kings determine the division of chapters, although it makes a slight effort to obscure this. Chapter titles like “Plague and War” or “Famine and Deposition” are describing real enough events but they are a façade for (in this case) the reigns of Edward III and Richard II. Given that the book is divided up this way certain periods get covered in greater depth than others. The chapter on Richard II, for example, covers 22 years in 57 pages while Edward III’s eventful reign of 47 years only gets a single page more.
While the book does well in establishing this balance, it really struggles to make its chosen topics work. The narrative sections are particularly grim. Take the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. We start off sensibly enough with an introduction to the revolt. We’re then immediately told the name is a misnomer as it wasn’t led by peasants nor was it a revolt (but who and what was it then?), we read something of the revoltees’ motives (which really could have been explained earlier), some aspects of their march are outlined, Wat Tyler’s death is mentioned, and then we go back to the goals of the movement and what they did before discussing the meaning of their actual actions and then the aftermath. You’d never guess from this that Wat Tyler’s death signaled the collapse of the rebellion! What happened to the rebels after they were led away from London? Who opposed them and why? How did Londoners (who she said were the main force in the revolt) fit in? Richard’s role in this is vague, even though we spend most of our time with him. I was left with the rough impression that he was somewhat sympathetic to the rebels and did all he could for them… but that’s directly contrary to what every other book I’ve read said. This feels like a iconoclastic revision of existing viewpoints, but we never hear those viewpoints nor get any negative justification for rejecting them or positive justification for an alternate view. What is being argued here?
The basic problem with the way this is approached is the total lack of chronology. The ignoring of any linear notion of cause and effect leaves a confusing muddle of an account. I read a book on Wat Tyler’s Revolt years ago (Summer of Blood, it’s very good!), but I was still puzzled about what was going on when I read it here. The problem here is that this is taking a thematic approach to an event. There are some thing she wants to say about the topic, so she groups them roughly by category and covers them one by one in no obvious order. I looked at Rubin’s bibliography, and while I haven’t read any of her other books they look to be chiefly thematic in nature. Which is fine – a lot of great books cover specific aspects of history rather than focusing on strict chronology. And indeed, nothing says you can’t mix thematic and narrative elements in the same account. But if you’re going to try to give us the story of an event it makes no sense to give a holistic account – establishing a feel for events by covering a variety of topics away from the center. We need to hear the basics of what happened before we can circle around the various issues it raised. I was left befuddled. And this is distressingly common throughout the book.
Another issue with the narrative sections is that there really isn’t much of an explanation for why events happen. The deposition of Richard II was one of the events I wanted to understand better but I can’t say I understand it any more now than I did before. I can identify the actual incidents that took place, but the reasons given (or often not) for their occurrence left me more confounded than enlightened. The conclusions are confusing and seem to rely on a set of facts or assumptions that are never stated. Events are regularly omitted (or possibly, given the issues elsewhere, mentioned out of sequence with no indication of their importance) only to have the book casually allude to their seminal nature. She states her conclusion and assumes we follow her meaning. To return to my example above, her explanation for Richard II’s fall is that he behaved more like a magnate than a king. That’s an interesting idea, but what does it mean? How does a magnate behave and what’s different with kingship? On this and many other occasions she seems to assume that making a general statement is enough and we can follow her train of thought without further information.
The book also has an awful tendency to mention events in passing before they are covered. It’s very confusing to hear of the Duke of Suffolk’s murder only to scroll back looking for it only to realize it hasn’t been mentioned yet. The opposite is sometimes true as well: Henry V’s death is only mentioned in passing after it happened when introducing the reign of his son. It simultaneously includes both too much and too little detail. Probably the best narrative section in the book is that covering the War of the Roses. Possibly because the whole conflict is notoriously confusing the book makes a real effort to rely on clear unambiguous statements with judgments whose reasoning we can understand. This section is not immune from the earlier issues – when the Duke of Gloucester is tried and executed we get a brief statement of the fact with no further details – but it does handle them substantially better.
As you might imagine from all that, the thematic sections of each chapter are rather less problematic. Without the need to provide a chronological backbone of events to get us through, the book can talk about a variety of connected aspects throughout the period. This is transparently the type of story she wanted to tell. Even here the book can be rather vague about specific facts, but the overall feel is established. It helps that confusion with one of these thematic segments need not impair your understanding of others. If you’re discussing the clergy, for example, and the section on manuals written for their education goes over your head this will not impair your ability to understand the following discussion on popular suspicions of the clergy in the same way that confusion over Richard II’s political difficulties will impede your understanding of his deposition.
Still, the fact remains that even if it doesn’t throw you completely off, some of these discussions are just as confusing as the narrative sections. Even a thematic approach needs some kind of structure, but the book tends to just wander from point to point with no obvious plan. For example, the book begins with a discussion of the Great Famine of 1315 and the official reactions to it, but almost immediately turns this into a discussion of London and its role in the economy. It’s not totally unconnected, but sometimes it feels as if the impulse for this tangent is more an excuse than a cause. Topics are chosen to give flavor, but not much binds them together. I could detect no overall thesis, either on a chapter level or for the whole book.
The last book in this series provided an excellent look at the political/military events of the time. This book feels closer to the one before that, which rejected the whole idea of a political narrative. The difficulty is that I don’t think that was deliberate. It tries to continue the political narrative, but it struggles to make sense of it. The narrative sections are far more confusing than they need to be and leave out (or include out of place) important information that you need to know to understand what’s happening. The explanations given do not provide a good guide to the motives behind events or a why things happened. Topics seem chosen at random with no clear plan to their inclusion. I think the intention was to take a holistic approach to the period, but mostly I just found myself wondering where these topics fit into the larger questions. Overall I found it a mess. I am a very experienced reader, able to work my way through sophisticated historiographical debates and explain them in simple terms. I shouldn’t be getting thrown off by an introductory text written for general audiences!
I think this is the first of Penguin’s book that I would genuinely advise people to avoid. Check out the relevant volumes of Oxford’s series (Plantagenet England 1225-1360 and Shaping The Nation: England, 1360-1461) if you want a place to start. I haven’t read any other general surveys of the period, so the rest of my recommendations will be based on specific incidents within the era. The Great Mortality is the best account I’ve found of the Black Death. The Hundred Years War: A People’s History covers the Hundred Years War (obviously) but is broader than that topic might imply. I wasn’t a big fan (plus it’s more French than English) but a lot of people seem to like Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror and it does cover most of the 14th century. The English Monarchs series offers a top-heavy biographical approach that is somewhat disparaged nowadays, but the biographies of the kings for this era (particularly Henry III, Edward I & III and Richard II – see Kendall’s biography for Richard III) do a good job of explaining their era. This is an eclectic and not very thorough list because it reflects my reading habits. That’s why I picked up this book: I wanted to gain a more general understanding of the period. I guess I shall be seeking it elsewhere.
September 12, 2017
This book was so dry that I find myself alternating between forgetting its title entirely and feeling like the phrase The Hollow Crown is drifting through my dreams and turning them into nightmares.
It gets a second star because it was well-researched and the topic itself is interesting. Nonetheless, the material deserved better, and I wish I hadn't suffered through this book. A friend of mine who also read it and I now can simply mention the title to each other and immediately the pain of reading The Hollow Crown comes flooding back.
It gets a second star because it was well-researched and the topic itself is interesting. Nonetheless, the material deserved better, and I wish I hadn't suffered through this book. A friend of mine who also read it and I now can simply mention the title to each other and immediately the pain of reading The Hollow Crown comes flooding back.
November 27, 2018
I forgot to write the review and now it's too hard to remember enough. I can say that I am surprised by all the people who found the book really dull. I found it readable and that can be saying a lot with narrative history (having read so many that were, less, readable).
December 5, 2016
Fairly general book about the history of Britain between 1307 and 1485. Some people have criticised this book for not going incredibly deeply into the dynastic wars and struggles more commonly know as 'The War of the Roses', but considering how many books have been about those, it was actually quite refreshing to read a little more about the 'life in general' in Britain in those years. Well, I say Britain, but it was more England and Wales. Scotland's history during those times was barely touched, Scotland seemed to be just up there, north of the border, with whom England had few skirmishes along the way. But nevertheless, the book was a good reminder that there was more to life in England during those years than just kings and queens battling for power. People lived and tried to make something out of their lives.
October 26, 2014
This is an ambitious historical overview of late medieval England, and as so often is the case, a number of topics are touched upon but little is explored with any depth. The tumultuous political history of this period (complete with deposed monarchs, usurping queens, murdered princes, shifting loyalties, and plenty of warfare) is considered alongside the social and cultural aspects of the age. The Black Death ravaged the population in the earlier part of this period and by the end, printed books were beginning to appear in England. While this book is a good introduction to late medieval England, readers more familiar with the period will likely find a lot missing and will crave more detail than this overview can provide.
October 11, 2017
Rubin packs a lot into this book. It's full of interesting stuff and should be a good beginning book for someone who wants to learn about this period of English history. How then did she manage to make it so boring? In addition, for an "intro to..." type of book, Rubin seems to assume the reader already has more than a passing knowledge of the era. This is the kind of history book that turns people off of history. This is a fascinating time period and there just has to be a better book. I have a high tolerance for boring and this one went over my limit. I did finish it, with a struggle, but I don't think I got much out of it.
July 9, 2024
Baffling drop in quality between the previous volume and this one. Where that book was a comprehensive, thoughtfully organized and engagingly written historical narrative, this is largely a tedious, half-baked mess. The introduction sets the tone by trotting out a jumble of platitudes with no special relevance to the period in question: people in this period had Identities and Values and Gender; they engaged in Community and Politics and Remembrance of the Past; they lived in Landscapes.
The remaining chapters get more specific but suffer from the same disease. Each covers a period usually coinciding with the reign of a particular king, and each is divided into various titled sections. The order in which these sections are presented seems quite arbitrary, meaning there's little sense of narrative cohesion. A few sections in each chapter are dedicated to a rather haphazard account of high politics that gives you little sense of the order in which things happened and leaves many narrative threads hanging; the rest is an endless parade of titles like 'Country Life', 'Wool and Cloth', 'Church Building', 'Towns', 'Trade and Lifestyle', and so on. Rather than dedicate separate chapters to topics like these, à la the previous volume, Rubin chooses to repeat very similar information in every chapter, doing little to elucidate what changed between different periods and constantly snatching the more interesting material about high politics away from the reader.
Also worth noting: where the previous volume was very much a history of Britain, this one, while still titled as such, only covers England. Who were the kings of Scotland in this period? Rubin won't tell you. Of course it's fine to just write about England, but it's bizarre not to have some consistency on this point across what is supposed to be a cohesive series.
The remaining chapters get more specific but suffer from the same disease. Each covers a period usually coinciding with the reign of a particular king, and each is divided into various titled sections. The order in which these sections are presented seems quite arbitrary, meaning there's little sense of narrative cohesion. A few sections in each chapter are dedicated to a rather haphazard account of high politics that gives you little sense of the order in which things happened and leaves many narrative threads hanging; the rest is an endless parade of titles like 'Country Life', 'Wool and Cloth', 'Church Building', 'Towns', 'Trade and Lifestyle', and so on. Rather than dedicate separate chapters to topics like these, à la the previous volume, Rubin chooses to repeat very similar information in every chapter, doing little to elucidate what changed between different periods and constantly snatching the more interesting material about high politics away from the reader.
Also worth noting: where the previous volume was very much a history of Britain, this one, while still titled as such, only covers England. Who were the kings of Scotland in this period? Rubin won't tell you. Of course it's fine to just write about England, but it's bizarre not to have some consistency on this point across what is supposed to be a cohesive series.
March 21, 2025
This is what happens when the author of a history book makes the baffling decision to downplay the narrative and keep it as weak as possible. Defining touchstones of the era like the Hundred Years War, the Peasants Revolt or the Wars of the Roses are each blown through in just a couple of pages of superficial description without any kind of insight. What remains is a hot mess of generalities like "Country life", "The Law", or the favorite "Religion" which are returned to over and over again even when there's nothing interesting to add. And if you're looking for anything interesting about Chaucer you sure as heck won't find it in the blandly titled "Books". The material here is crying out for a reworking by someone with a keener analytical ability, who can pump some life into the story. And "A History of Britain" is a misnomer as Scotland is almost totally absent. Worst history I've ever read.
August 22, 2020
A laborious read. The poverty of Rubin's prose is self-evident - nor am I convinced that she is much better as a historian. Her comments are rarely insightful and the book consists primarily of information, with little meaningful interpretation to back any of it up. And by the way, the book is way too Anglo-centric for an entry into the so-called "Penguin History of Britain."
September 23, 2024
This is honestly not the book I thought it was, and I think that’s a good thing. Rather than the usual history of the kings of England, The Hollow Crown focuses on what life was like for the common people in the age from Richard II to Richard III, with brief notes on when the crown changed hands and why.
August 4, 2021
Interesting and useful - occasionally a bit dry, but on the whole a good read if you like history.
September 17, 2021
A bit of a tough read because the prose can be dense and had to reread bits to get the flow... but very interesting. Positively, I gained an understanding of the complexity of the social and economic changes from the periods of Black Death, War and the incessant rivalry of Peers and Kings. Good analysis of landowning over time and its use, the power of the church and its hold on allowable thought and the intertwining of the multiple layers of communal structures and associations that comprised all levels of society. These descriptions also involved changes in law which still have an impact in modern society. Scotland was ignored (except in relation to Border fighting with England) and didn't even get included as part of the maps at the front. Some cover of the regal and political interest in Wales and Ireland, where it was relevant to English power dynamics. Gave some aspects of a Kings life events more page space and insightful analysis than others. Also gave me some new understandings of English and French relationships.
May 4, 2016
A very good overview of 14th-century to late 15th-century England. As other reviewers have noted, other Britannic countries come into view only as their actions impact England, whereupon they fade into the background until the next stage cue is received.
That said, the high points are duly noted, in comprehensible and interesting language, with enough anecdotal detail to give one a flavor of the very different lives and preoccupations of ancient people. As commentators say, each chapter could (and has been) made into a book. A personal quibble; the last chapter of the Yorkist/Lancastrian civil war was given fairly sort shrift, as if in haste to wrap things up, and the accession of Henry VII was merely announced, without any of the modern questions and investigations regarding his murderous acts to secure his succession and posterity, and the timing of them.
But, a good background for expanding one's understanding of a distant time, in preparation for reading historical fiction based in this era.
Also time to return to Barbara Tuchman's excellent book on this era, "A Distant Mirror", which more directly relates the socioeconomic changes in society then, to our own time, relating changes to ideas and attitudes we now take for granted.
That said, the high points are duly noted, in comprehensible and interesting language, with enough anecdotal detail to give one a flavor of the very different lives and preoccupations of ancient people. As commentators say, each chapter could (and has been) made into a book. A personal quibble; the last chapter of the Yorkist/Lancastrian civil war was given fairly sort shrift, as if in haste to wrap things up, and the accession of Henry VII was merely announced, without any of the modern questions and investigations regarding his murderous acts to secure his succession and posterity, and the timing of them.
But, a good background for expanding one's understanding of a distant time, in preparation for reading historical fiction based in this era.
Also time to return to Barbara Tuchman's excellent book on this era, "A Distant Mirror", which more directly relates the socioeconomic changes in society then, to our own time, relating changes to ideas and attitudes we now take for granted.
July 23, 2011
This was good but a struggle in places. Some of the sentences went on for what seemed like an age and it was sometimes hard to see where the stresses were. You had to read it again and fight your way through the commas! Also, the beginning was packed with so many figures and percentages that I felt myself reading quickly just to get past it. It was interesting stuff and I can appreciate there was a lot to get into one book considering the large time span she covered. Sometimes, however, it did become repetitive when subjects were discussed that had not seen much change from one king to the next. It is an area that I know little about and this was good in that it gave an in depth and varied account. It did not just focus on the monarchy but looked at all levels.
September 26, 2012
3.5 stars. This is a great primer for readers who don't have much background knowledge on this time period (Edward III to Henry VI) — those who do won't find a lot of new information, so don't choose this if that's what you're looking for. But, do choose it if you're looking for a nicely done overview read. I agree with the reviewers who commented on the writing style, though; there was something kind of distracting about it in places.
September 21, 2013
English history is poorly taught in English schools. This is an admirable attempt to describe life in late medieval Britain. It highlights the frustrations caused by French and Scots attacks upon England.
November 6, 2013
If you love reading history, then 'The Hollow Crown' is just the book for you. This isn't a fast read, but it's so interesting. It's also a must-have for anyone researching and/or writing historical fiction set during the 100 Years War and the War of the Roses.
August 22, 2020
Title is kind of misleading. This book is far more about how regular people lived during 14th and 15th centuries. Maybe a quarter to a third of the book have anything to do with recognizable events or the crown. Still interesting.
September 24, 2008
Suffers from trying to cover too much ground, but many interesting tidbits.
For instance, she ascribes Agincourt more to mud than archers.
For instance, she ascribes Agincourt more to mud than archers.
October 16, 2009
A snoozer.
April 11, 2010
An adequate primer to early modern England not meant to be specialized.
October 25, 2012
I picked this up for nonfiction background to Shakespeare's histories - works nicely for that purpose.
Read
February 27, 2013Skimmed too loosely to give a rating. It was too broad and too general to keep my interest - I prefer my history with a focus to it, be it a specific person, place, or thing.
March 19, 2017
Good all encompassing overview of the period, especially of social and economic history. However, sometimes assumes an overarching knowledge of key events and timeline of the period
August 1, 2012
It tool a while to get into the author's rhythm. Great info though.
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