Thomas B. Costain Magnificent Century

Annotation

Following The Conquerors in chronological sequence, this second book covers the long reigns of the weathercock King Henry III, from 1216 to 1272.And again, Thomas B. Costain, combining years of keen research with his practiced skill at novel writing, has brought vividly to life an era and its people, proving once more that factual history can be superb entertainment.It was during the period covered in this book, an age appropriately termed "the magnificent century," that England first made remarkable strides toward freedom, establishing principles of democratic rule which would later be accepted by the world. Englishmen returned home from the Crusades with the first implements for a new life-foreign books, medicines, and maps of the East; new foods, new heresies, and even new diseases. Although wars went on as before and ignorance still held sway, this was the beginning of an awakening which was to sweep men on to spectacular advances in the arts, science, philosophy, and theology.As always in a Costain book, this story of a great age is told through the people who lived in it-the great and the small. Among many others, there are graphic portraits of the weak, vacillating monarch: Henry, and his beautiful wife, Eleanor of Provence, who became England's most hated queen; famous statesman and soldier Simon de Montfort, whose personal feud with the royal family brought on civil war; courageous churchman Robert Grosseteste, who taught his pupils the first glimmers of scientific truth; and Roger Bacon, a man of mighty intellect and fascinating mystery, who developed the principles of research and experiment upon which scientific progress has been based.Long cherishing this project to present English history as a colorful, readable, human story, Thomas Costain, in THE MAGNIFICENT CENTURY as in The Conquerors, has succeeded admirably in portraying all the drama and bright pageantry of a vital age in the chronicle of England.