The Hundred Years War Vol 5: Triumph and Illusion (Hundred Years War, 5)

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On 5 February 1328 the last Capetian king of France was laid to rest in the royal mausoleum of Saint-Denis.

The denouement of the war is more interesting than its messy origins, when the death of Charles IV of France in 1328 marked the end of the Capetian dynasty and its replacement with the Valois one. Sumption and Joseph co-wrote a 1979 book, Equality, seeking to show that "no convincing arguments for an equal society have ever been advanced" and that "no such society has ever been successfully created". Triumph and Illusion takes the story from the high point of English power in France in 1422 to its complete extinction (with the exception of Calais) 31 years later. Its an amazing achievement for a person not a professional historian who has risen so highly in another. He trusts his own judgement and has certainly read many of the primary sources, though some of the secondary sources he references have been superseded.

Surprisingly, Sumption claims that the idea of an English “continental wall” to protect against invasion “made little sense” in the late Middle Ages.

This is Game of Thrones history, with plenty of crazed kings, martial heroes, dastardly betrayals, silky clerical types and prisoners rotting in foul dungeons… It is difficult to see that anyone could do this type of history better than Sumption. One is reminded of this exchange reading Jonathan Sumption’s utterly engrossing Triumph and Illusion, which deals with the final 30 years or so of the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) between England and France. Many negotiations were held, but gradually Valois control was established across French territory, last of all taking Bordeaux in 1453, though leaving difficult to attack from the land Calais in English hands for another century. This is relentless, narrative-driven history, written with clarity, passion and, above all, self-confidence.

Upon his subsequent swearing-in on 11 January 2012, [1] he assumed the judicial courtesy title of Lord Sumption pursuant to a royal warrant (by which all members of the Supreme Court, even if they do not hold a peerage title, are accorded the style of " Lord" for life). 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 . Triumph and Illusion' is the final volume of Jonathan Sumption's epic history of the Hundred Years War. He believes that history should not be apologised for once perpetrators of injustices are no longer alive, describing apologies for events such as the Irish Famine and the Armenian genocide as "morally worthless", although saying that, "we have a duty to understand why things happened as they did" and there are "lessons to be learned".

He voted to remain in the European Union in the 2016 referendum, describing the decision to leave as, "a serious mistake that will do lasting damage to our economy" [44] and that, "Britain will be dominated by the European Union whether we belong to it or not". The Guardian once described him as being a member of the "million-a-year club", the elite group of barristers earning over a million pounds a year. Although far from clear it was intended, the disruption of the campaign shrank the fiscal system that paid for the Lancastrian ruled region.It tells the story of the collapse of the English dream of conquest, from the opening years of the reign of Henry VI, when the battles of Cravant and Verneuil consolidated their control of most of northern France, to the loss of all of England’s continental dominions except Calais thirty years later. He lives in Greenwich and has a second home, a chateau in the village of Berbiguières in the south of France.