PLANTAGANETS by Dan Jones

By any reckoning the Plantagenets were the longest-reigning Royal house to rule England, but the date they start and end is debatable. By the reckoning of historian Dan Jones, they start with Henry II, that colourful monarch who came to the throne in 1154 and lived much of his life at the Royal Palace of Woodstock; and end with Richard II, who died in 1399.

But even Jones concedes in his preface that it would have been perfectly possible to have continued the book up to Richard III (a scion of the Yorkist branch of the family) who was defeated by Henry Tudor at Bosworth in 1485. The word Plantagenet first appears in English Parliamentary rolls with reference to Richard, Duke of York, in 1460. But none of the kings now remembered by that surname would have called themselves Plantaganet. The word derives from the Latin for a yellow broom blossom (planta genista), a sprig of which Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, wore in his hat. “There is some irony here,” writes Jones, because “Geoffrey never visited England, took scant interest in the affairs of the realm and died in 1151, three years before his eldest son [Henry II] inherited the English Crown.”

He chose to end his book at 1399, rather than following the story through to its grisly end to avoid making an already fat book (631 pages) too fat to read in bed. But however that may be, this book — subtitled The Kings Who Made England — is a must-read for anyone wanting to find out how England developed its national identity following the Norman Conquest. And plenty of Plantagenets have connections with Oxfordshire: for instance Richard I and John were both born at Beaumont Palace, which stood at the bottom end of Oxford’s present Beaumont Street; and Matilda, of course, made her dramatic escape from her cousin Stephen from Oxford Castle in 1142.