A short but informative account of the life of Henry III. Stephen Church doesn’t pull his punches, presenting Henry as weak, stupid and fortunate to reign as long as he did. Despite his uselessness, he built Westminster Abbey at vast expense and his reign saw the emergence of Parliament as a central governing institution, together with key developments in common law. There is a concise and balanced account of the conflict with Simon de Montfort, the pivotal episode in Henry’s long reign.

This was my 1st book finished in 2024.

I was surprised that the book opened and jumped straight into Henry III's coronation. Nothing on his childhood, then?

I found it difficult to engage with. I guess it's not the author's fault, I just found a lot of it very dry; swathes of his lifetime are covered, but in my opinion, with no interesting specifics. 

I have to say though, I liked the layout. Rather than chapters, it was broken in smaller paragraphs for different events. It made it a lot easier to get through.

This was fast-paced, well researched, well cited and tried to simplify these very complicated politics admirably.
Much appreciated.
I read this in January of 2022. 

A good overview of Henry III's reign. I enjoyed it! Pretty quick, although I needed multiple breaks. I wish the formatting had been more like chapters rather than headers on different topics that took the reader through his reign. But, it was still good. I feel like it gave more context to Edward I's reign and who he was as a person, so that was very interesting. I can definitely see myself rereading this once I get the full Plantagenet section of these books so I can read all the reigns together.