"The War of the Roses", the "Battle of Bosworth", and the "Princes in the Tower"; the century and a half covered by Shakespeare's history plays - from the recently authenticated "Edward III" and "Richard III" -is so full of incident that dramatic licence might seem unnecessary. But as this survey of the period shows, Shakespeare's dramas - which have influenced popular history for centuries - are prone to depart from the facts. By illuminating the enthralling political, military and dynastic events which supplied the raw material for the greatest dramatist in the English language, and the artistic, political and practical considerations that determined his approach to that material, John Julius Norwich does a great service both to lovers of traditional narrative history, and to all those interested in Shakespeare and his work.
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About the Author:
John Julius Norwich was born in 1929. He joined the British Foreign Service after studying French and Russian at Oxford, and left the service in 1964 to become a writer. He has also worked extensively in radio and television, hosting the popular BBC radio panel game My Word! for several years, and writing and presenting historical documentaries. His many books include an acclaimed Byzantium trilogy., John Julius, 2nd Viscount Norwich, was born in 1929, the son of the statesman and diplomat Alfred Duff Cooper (1st Viscount) and the Lady Diana Cooper. He was educated at Upper Canada College, Toronto, at Eton, at the University of Strasbourg and on the lower deck of the Royal Navy before taking a degree in French and Russian at New College, Oxford. In 1952 he joined the Foreign Service, where he remained for twelve years, serving at the embassies in Belgrade and Beirut and with the British Delegation to the Disarmament Conference at Geneva. In 1964 he resigned from the service in order to write. His many and varied publications include two books on the medieval Norman Kingdom in Sicily, The Normans in the South and The Kingdom in the Sun, which are published by Faber Finds; The Architecture of Southern England; Glyndebourne; and A History of Venice, originally published in two volumes. He is also the author of a three-volume history of the Byzantine Empire. He has written and presented some thirty historical documentaries for television, and is a regular lecturer on Venice and numerous other subjects.
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- PublisherPenguin Books
- Publication date2000
- ISBN 10 0140249133
- ISBN 13 9780140249132
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages496
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