The text is separated into five chronological sections, only the first of which examines in about one hundred pages Henry’s life up to 1399 and his usurpation of Richard II. This new book by Professor Given-Wilson, published in February 2016 (April in the USA - the American release dates are usually a couple of months behind those of Britain), discusses primarily the thirteen years of Henry’s reign, rather than Henry’s earlier experiences when Richard II was king.

The 2016 publication date suggests that he might have inherited the mantle at Brown’s death eleven years beforehand, though longer periods of preparation are possible: Professor Carpenter had been working on his Henry III book since at least 1989 and it was published in 2020, thirty-one years later. Neither does the new author mention how long he had worked on his biography of Henry IV. It is not recorded in Chris Given-Wilson’s new book on Henry IV if Brown gave up the commission for the book, or if it was his death in 2006 that rendered it unfinished. Fortunately we have a new book with new views on Henry IV. Brown was doubtless chosen at the time for his prominence in the field of Henry IV studies and for the wide acceptance of a view he pioneered among contemporary historians that Henry was a weak king led by his supporters.

(Alfred Lawson) Brown (1927-2006), Edwards Chair of Medieval History, University of Glasgow, was credited as preparing a biography on Henry IV for the series. In the ‘forthcoming’ lists in the early Methuen English Monarchs books of the late 1980s, Professor A.L.

Henry IV by Christopher Given-Wilson