King John — Marc Morris

Morris's biography of King John treats the standard verdict — cruel, treacherous, incompetent — as a problem to be investigated rather than a conclusion to be illustrated. Drawing on the administrative records of the Chancery as well as the chronicles, he finds a king of considerable energy and administrative capacity whose failures were real but were substantially constructed by baronial opponents with their own interests in a particular narrative. Magna Carta emerges not as the origin of English liberty but as a political document imposed on a king his barons needed to control — and immediately set aside when it proved inconvenient.

'A brilliant reassessment of England's most maligned monarch. Morris writes history with authority and elegance.' — Dan Jones. 'The best biography of King John yet written.' — Literary Review