This is a narrative biography, with Edward’s personality, martial exploits and way of life very much to the fore. It is not Mortimer’s intention to enter into these debates or to examine Edward’s government in any detail. Then, in the 1980s and 1990s, in a series of books and articles based on extensive work in the record sources, Mark Ormrod argued vigorously that Edward had been a conscientious, ‘hands-on king’ who successfully asserted royal authority. In the 1950s May McKisack wrote a sturdy defence of Edward (rightly praised by Mortimer). All this, it is suggested, created difficulties for his successor and grandson, Richard II, and even laid some of the foundations for the Wars of the Roses. Thus Edward has been seen as careless of the rights of the Crown, too little concerned with the maintenance of law and order, too generous in his patronage of nobles, too ready to hand local government over to a corrupt ‘bastard feudal’ combination of magnates and gentry, and too accommodating to the demands of the Commons in Parliament. ‘He practised appeasement at home to pursue war abroad’ is a judgment undergraduates are frequently asked to address. In more recent times, historians have continued to enter reservations. Bishop Stubbs, ‘peering down on the Middle Ages from the twin heights of an episcopal throne and a professorial chair’, as Mortimer puts it, condemned Edward as ‘ambitious, unscrupulous, selfish, extravagant and ostentatious’. In the 19th century, as Ian Mortimer shows in the introduction to his new biography, Victorian rectitude and a preoccupation with constitutional history caused feelings about Edward to change. Perhaps the only comparable hero in British history has been Churchill, and as with Churchill, Edward’s reputation survived a long period of dotage. Dr Johnson, in his poem London, called on ‘illustrious Edward!’ to survey the current crop of degenerate Britons: ‘Lost in thoughtless ease, and empty show. Edward, the initiator of the Hundred Years War, the victor of Sluys and Crécy, the conqueror of Calais, achieved legendary status in his lifetime, and was long revered after his death.

So (in translation) run the verses around the tomb of Edward III in Westminster Abbey, erected soon after his death in 1377. he ruled mighty in arms now in heaven let him be a king. Here the glory of the English the flower of past kings the form of future kings a merciful king the peace of his peoples Edward III, completing the jubilee of his reign an unconquered leopard victorious in battle like a Maccabee.

The perfect king ian mortimer