Customer Reviews

Simon de Montfort (British Lives)

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J.R. Maddicott brings a lively and informative narrative with "Simon De Montfort". This mid 1990s 404-page (paperback) book is popular with four reprints by 1999. Maddicott is thorough in this presentation. He searches many, if not all, documents from the era for composing the dramatic and interesting life of medieval England's most famous Frenchman.

With documented history Maddicott persuasively argues that De Montfort was a powerful pioneer for English baronial liberties. The book answers many questions about Simon's life, politics, religion, victories and defeats (in the political arenas and on battlefields). The reader also learns about Simon's family life (he married the king's widowed sister- Eleanor- without royal permission and had duplicitous sons), the life long quarrel between De Montfort and King Henry III, how the battle at Lewes brought Simon to the pinnacle of governmental power, and about his disastrous defeat and death at Evesham.

If you like medieval pageantry and romance, you will appreciate Maddicott's presentation with "Simon De Montfort". French aristocrat De Montfort arrives to England in 1230 to begin his colorful baronial career. At first Henry III warms to the young aristocrat. Soon their relationship sours and De Montfort diligently works to depose Henry and gain royal power for the remainder of his life. It is a gripping interesting story.

Although Maddicott tends toward run-on sentences and sometimes tediously examines each source (multiple footnotes appear on almost every page), this book is a good read. It opens with a helpful abbreviations list, presents an informative family tree, supplies more than 20 photos and maps, offers an exhaustive 12-page bibliography, and closes with a useable index.

This book is recommendable particularly for English history buffs, medieval scholars, military historians, and constitutional history students. The specialty reader and the general reader will find, through this text, Simon De Montfort exciting and well worth the price.

This book proves to be a well-written if not very complex biography of Simon de Montfort, a revolutionary mediveal baron who dares to challenged the King of England about the limitation of the royal powers. While initially successful, he allowed that success to go to his head and he was finally defeated and killed.

The book revealed a highly complex character, its superbly researched, readable to a those who knoweledge of the period is pretty good, bit hard on those who may be entering this subject for the first time. The author managed to intergrate all elements of de Montfort's life, as a great soldier, as a politican, a man of God with a look of idealism and above all, a family man. Along with his strengths, lies his weaknesses, his ruthless ambition, self-centered on family promotion and wealth at expense of others and his overwhelming sense of pride that borderline on sheer arrogance. The book clearly show how his strength gained him his victories while his weaknesses sent him into defeat.

With great insight, perception and scholarship, I would say this biography of Mountfort is probably the best on the subject and one of the best on any mediveal personalities of the time period. (Although Michael Prestwich's biography on Edward I is also quite excellent.)

A very fair account of a truly remarkable individual. It presents him as a man dedicated to his ideals and as a man utterly obsessed with his well-being, even at the cost of his losing credibility for his government and the provisions he fought so hard for, making him believable as a real man. It is a shame so few people know about him. Highly recomended!

Great but tragic story of a strong character who wanted too much and lost everything. Facinating story of an educated man in a uneducated time. Inside into the economic circumstances and its motivation in the 12th century. Highly recommendable but also higly difficult to read.

A little over halfway through this exhausting account, Maddicott invites the inquisitive historian to wonder whether de Montfort's papal bull supporting the Provisions of Oxford might not have been consigned to the bottom drawer had his claims against the king been satisfied. Maddicott declines to offer his own answer, but his endless ledgers and references to de Montfort's greed and avarice and aggrandizement, mostly having to do with his wife's dower (mentioned an incredible two dozen times), suggest that it's a resounding yes. Maddicott's tone is subdued, his research impeccable, but the relentless repetition of de Montfort's flaws, while continuously second-guessing his qualities, would also suggest that the author finds little inspiration in a man who even Henry and Edward admired at one point in their lives. Perhaps Maddicott did as well, but apparently it has been consigned to the bottom drawer.

It took me ages to wade through this but I am very pleased that I did. Its very comprehensively written and I appreciated the lengths that the author undertook in his research.

This book was a bit serious for me but I enjoyed the learning experience that it provided.

Not read this title yet but I am sure it will prove to be an interesting and authoritarian read on such an important and enigmatic figure from Early Medieval English History who left such a lasting imprint and legacy: Although maybe more so in the US than here: I believe that in your country, he is cited as an important historical figure standing for devolution of power and founding the beginnings of a democratially elected parliament; a sort of for-runner to George Washington or Abraham Lincoln; certainly in the same vein.