Henry III: The Great King England Never Knew It Had

Henry III (1207-1272) reigned for 56 years, the longest-serving English monarch until the modern era. Admired for his building projects like Westminster Abbey, he is dismissed by scholars as weak and inept. This biography shows that he was in fact a more than capable ruler. Crowned as a boy, scarred by civil war, he strove to be a good king, but his increasingly insular barons and clergy constantly thwarted his plans to make England a cosmopolitan center. Their  resentfulness led to a palace revolution that checked his power. He would have clawed it all back were it not for one man, Simon de Montfort. Yet somehow Henry survived, as he always had, through the remarkable 13th century.