Richard II: a brittle glory

Richard II (1377-1399) came to the throne as a child, following the long, domineering, martial reign of his grandfather Edward III.

He suffered from the disastrous combination of a most exalted sense of his own power and an inability to impress that power on those closest to the throne.

Neither trusted nor feared, Richard battled with a whole series of failures and emergencies before finally succumbing to a coup, imprisonment and murder.

Laura Ashe's account of his reign emphasizes the strange gap between Richard's personal incapacity and the amazing cultural legacy of his reign.