A Great and Glorious Adventure: A History of the Hundred Years War and the Birth of Renaissance England

Brilliant overview of the 100 Years War, with only a slight bent for the English over the French. Okay, maybe slightly more than slight, but Major Corrigan still manages a well balanced telling, pointing the finger at whom so ever deserves it. If this were to be my only source to learn about this great piece of European history, I would count myself well served.

This is truly old school history. By that, I mean the author, Gordon Corrigan, is English and has clear anti-French biases which he never denies (he writes, for example, that "I cannot hide my conviction that England's demands on France were lawful and justified"). I'm sure many a French historian would disagree, and it is difficult for a historian to make such claims and hope to have his claims to be impartial in the telling of the story taken seriously. I mean, this is a man who has never quite gotten over the loss of France. A real eye-opener for an American.Also, this is not a modern history from the bottom, a story about individuals, about civilians or private soldiers. It is a history written by a military man of military campaigns told from the top down. It is full of heroes, mostly English (Joan of Arc gets short-shrift from the author). A Great and Glorious Adventure is an unapologetic flag-waver of a history book: Consider his statement that "the Hundred Years War as a great adventure, and a great and righteous cause." People don't talk like this anymore. Especially about war.For me, sitting here in the United States, this is like an American author writing about the American Revolution not in a detached way as a straightforward history, but damning our English enemies for their infamy. It was over 200 years ago. I wasn't there. No Englishman alive today was there.For Corrigan, the events he writes about are half a millennium the past. Part of me wants to shout, "Get over it!" But I recognize that we in America lack the long history between our country and another, especially a history so bitter. The subject is, after all, a series of wars that went off and on for a century or so.For all that, this book is a splendid read and a rousing good yarn, even for an American like me. This is true not only because of the exciting events he describes but the way in which Corrigan describes them. He writes well and provides a wealth of interesting tidbits along with the accounts of battles and campaigns (like the fact that horses are unable to vomit). So I smile, absorb it, and read along. It is difficult to not become enthused like a schoolboy. It made me want to watch Kenneth Branagh's Henry V again.If I have a complaint at all it is about the maps, which are rudimentary at best and not worthy of a military history. Several of the regional maps are mostly blank and white, with a river or two and some scattered towns thrown in. Yes, the towns marked match references in the text, battles, sieges, and so forth, but could we have more detail? Routes of march? Castles? Deployment of forces? Or even more geographical features? It is difficult, looking at them, to get a sense of how the campaigns played out. The battle maps, at least, are better.In the end, if you are interested in the subject, want a recent analysis that is also a gripping narrative, and are willing to put up with the historian cheering one side on over the other, I dare say you will enjoy this book. I did.

“There are many men who cry for war without knowing what war amounts to. “ Geoffrey ChaucerI was gifted this book by the publisher for an honest review.Gordon Corrigan has the credentials to write an excellent military history of the Hundred Years War and I found his scholarship and insight very valuable in this telling.I have read many accounts of this time period but nothing that encompasses it all and I think that is why this would be my go to book on the period.He knows the tactics of the battle and writes in an easily understood language for those that have little military training. I feel I have a better understanding of what each commander was feeling and why they used the tactics they did.Some reviewers have put him down as a biased author, but I didn’t find that to be true. He gave Joan of Arc her due and when an English warrior screwed up, we heard about that also. Perhaps it’s because when the English won, they won big like in Agincourt or Crecy.His honesty about the animosity between the French and English to this day was refreshing and as an American helped me to understand it in today’s perspective.I learned a great deal about the Hundred Years War from a different perspective than I was used to and I recommend this book to anyone interested in military tactics and the period itself.

One might as well recommend that one read this book along with Leslie Carroll's Inglorious Royal Marriages (2014), in particular, the marriage between Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou (pp. 1-40). The eternal enmity between France and England, but not Scotland and Wales, has been so well described that Corrigan's story reads like a piece of roman a clef between two young lovers. Every single sentence "sounds" like leas and rills of their trysting place. The story reaches its climax when the author says one of the causes of the Civil War could have been a (mis)perceived (?), by English nobility, French influence over Charles I through his French wife Henrietta. What would you think when a French general, after a considerable quantity of fine cognac, puts his arm around you and, looking you straight in the eye, says: "N'oubliez jamais;vous etes l'ennemi hereditaire"?

As described. Well done