Richard the Lion Heart

“When History drops her drums and trumpets and learns to tell the story of Englishmen, it will find the significance of Richard not in his Crusade or in his weary wars along the Norman border, but in his lavish recognition of municipal life.” It may well seem strange to begin by quoting these words of the master who inspired my earliest venture—and thereby, indirectly at least, all my later ventures also—into the field of history, the preface to a book on Richard the First in which that sov...