The Hundred Years War Vol 5: Triumph and Illusion

Sumption’s monumental history will gain well-deserved praise not just as a gripping and eminently readable account of innumerable crimes, follies and misfortunes but as a compelling justification for the enduring value of historical narrative.

The Hundred Years War ends in England’s agonising defeat – but triumph for Jonathan Sumption. Here, after 43 years of research and writing – or roughly two life spans of a 14th-century French peasant – is the same faith in narrative history, the same willingness to allow events to speak for themselves, the same command and deployment of sources, the same confidence and intellectual stamina that marked the first and every subsequent volume . . . there is no doubting Sumption’s achievement. It is, as everyone says, a "monumental" work.

Jonathan Sumption’s magisterial history of the Hundred Years War concludes with the detailed, judicious and far-sighted Volume Five . . . unsurpassed, and probably unsurpassable . . . As usual, Sumption’s writing is rich in military and political detail. He does not overburden the reader with his own conclusions, but offers them when he has a deep insight to share . . . Reading this magnificent and monumental history tells us about infinitely more than our medieval past.

Sumption bases his tale on original documents he has read in archives all over western Europe. He blends tight military and political narrative with biting and often amusing pen portraits of key figures. He controls the great sweep of war without sacrificing fine detail. Triumph and Illusion is the best volume in the series. In part this is because the story of England’s slow-motion defeat and expulsion from France is so horribly compelling. But it also has the advantage of being the end: the final piece of masonry slotted into place, which reveals the true shape of the building . . . Sumption is that rare and precious thing: a serious, decent, honest thinker . . . and one of our finest historians.

This contemporary epic has a claim to be the finest achievement by a living historian. One should read it because of the clear, reliable and deeply researched account it gives of English (and French) history in the 14th and 15th centuries, and particularly the lessons it teaches about the decline of English power. Sumption writes with a freshness and a clarity that highlight his percipience and make him easily comprehensible.