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My children's and my grandchildren's life is worth much more than mine because they've got a lot more of it ahead". Many Frenchmen, weary of the civil war between “Burgundians” and “Armagnacs”, welcomed the prospect of peace and stability under the Anglo-French Union of Crowns. One is reminded of this exchange reading Jonathan Sumption’s utterly engrossing Triumph and Illusion, which deals with the final 30 years or so of the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) between England and France. I make no claim of familiarity with the first four Hundred Years War volumes, for me it is how wars end that is more interesting, rather than how they start.
Home to William Golding, Sylvia Plath, Kazuo Ishiguro, Sally Rooney, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Max Porter, Ingrid Persaud, Anna Burns and Rachel Cusk, among many others, Faber is proud to publish some of the greatest novelists from the early twentieth century to today. The Government had money and reputation at stake, the case examining some of the actions of HM Government, especially of former Transport Secretary Stephen Byers. Throughout the book Sumption ensures that the weight of detail – often concerning intricate politics and diplomacy – is leavened by startling anecdotes and revelations that keep the narrative lively and which remind us of the sheer strangeness and horrific brutality of the Middle Ages. com/en/Books-Media/Books/Middle-Ages/Sumption-Jonathan-The-Hundred-Years-War-Volume-5-Triumph-and-Illusion. It brought an end to four centuries of the English dynasty's presence in France, separating two countries whose fortunes had once been closely intertwined.He devotes some 120 pages to the phenomenon of Joan, and her importance is further suggested by the book’s cover which depicts the English siege of Orléans in 1429, which Joan lifted, marking her out as the dauphin’s saviour and Bedford’s nemesis. In due course, England would unite with two other old enemies, Scotland and Ireland, but this time it was not to be. Many negotiations were held, but gradually Valois control was established across French territory, last of all taking Bordeaux in 1453, though leaving difficult to attack from the land Calais in English hands for another century. On 17 January 2021, Sumption appeared on The Big Questions to discuss the question of whether the lockdown was "punishing too many for the greater good", and said (with reference to the medical concept of quality-adjusted life years) that "I don't accept that all lives are of equal value. Volume IV (covering the years from 1399 to 1422) appeared in 2015, the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt.
Sumption's decision to tell the tale as it has been traditionally told, therefore, is far from unexpected.An opera lover, he serves as a director of the English National Opera and as a governor of the Royal Academy of Music. Sumption’s erudition and grasp of the literature is formidable: the entry in the bibliography for one leading scholar, Anne Curry, runs over three pages, the most recent from 2020. Essentially, as long as France was united, it was a richer and stronger country and as long as the fRench king did not give up the fight, England could ultimately not win, not with smaller resources in terms of manpower and wealth. Volume I (covering the years from the funeral of Charles IV of France in 1329 to the Surrender of Calais in 1347) was first published in 1990.