2018-12-13
This is a book about the Magna Carta document, and not much else. Which makes it quite a short book.
Sure, there’s context provided on how it came about – namely, a quick tour of the reign of King John. But it’s an exceedingly brief history, and it’s somewhat frustrating that Starkey tends to quote from just two primary historical sources, one of which he dismisses as unreliable and the second the reader should dismiss as unreliable.
Still, as a short tour of mediaeval history it is interesting, but it stands out as much for its limited perspective as much as anything else, and doesn’t really seem to work well as either a populist book or an academic text.
The one saving grace is that it does include different versions of the Magna Carta for comparison in the Appendix.
Rating: 3/5