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sparkin's review against another edition
4.0
This book opens with a really powerful description of a huge tragedy, and though the rest of the text doesn't reach the same level of intensity, it does clearly lay out all the ways in which the sinking of the White Ship impacted the Anglo-Norman world and what followed.
It's a period that strangely little has been written on for a general public audience and I thought it did a really good job of setting the scene, with the context of the Norman invasion and Henry I's rise from landless younger brother to European power-broker. It also serves as a biography of Henry I in that respect, and that's where the tone sometimes feels a bit jarring as the author is entirely too admiring of a man who personally threw a traitor out of a window, forcibly removed people from their homes so he could use the stone to extend the walls around his hunting land, and allowed his own granddaughters to be blinded.
I found the narrative interesting but it was often lacking in insight or analysis outside of Henry I himself - for example, Matilda disappears from the narrative a bit too easily, and I felt she was somewhat underserved. In setting out the huge cast of characters, why they matter and how they're connected, the prose also sometimes becomes an endless list of names. That said, it's mostly quite pacy and helps to fill an important gap between the Conqueror and the Plantagenets about which many people like me know very little.
It's a period that strangely little has been written on for a general public audience and I thought it did a really good job of setting the scene, with the context of the Norman invasion and Henry I's rise from landless younger brother to European power-broker. It also serves as a biography of Henry I in that respect, and that's where the tone sometimes feels a bit jarring as the author is entirely too admiring of a man who personally threw a traitor out of a window, forcibly removed people from their homes so he could use the stone to extend the walls around his hunting land, and allowed his own granddaughters to be blinded.
I found the narrative interesting but it was often lacking in insight or analysis outside of Henry I himself - for example, Matilda disappears from the narrative a bit too easily, and I felt she was somewhat underserved. In setting out the huge cast of characters, why they matter and how they're connected, the prose also sometimes becomes an endless list of names. That said, it's mostly quite pacy and helps to fill an important gap between the Conqueror and the Plantagenets about which many people like me know very little.
shellydennison's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
medium-paced
3.5
The title might lead you to think that the book focuses on the sinking of the White Ship, when the events of that night only really get a chapter. It's a straightforward narrative history of how England was ruled from the conquest to the accession of Henry II, using the drowning of Henry I's heir as the pivot point, as without it, the royal line would have looked very different. The focus is on the royals and nobility, there's not much here for readers interested in the lives of ordinary people and how they might have been impacted by the ensuing civil war etc. I'd have liked some of that kind of material but despite that it's well written and moved along at a good pace. A family tree or two might have been helpful for keeping the relationships clear in my head.
daja57's review against another edition
3.0
The White Ship was a ship travelling to England that sank in 1120 on a voyage from Barfleur in Normandy France; its historical significance was that among the dead was Prince William, the only legitimate son of Henry I, King of England. William's death provoked a succession crisis on Henry's death leading to a eighteen-year-long civil war between the supporters of King Stephen and Henry's only legitimate daughter, the Empress Matilda.
Of course, mediaeval history relies on just a few chronicled sources, so there are insufficient details in the story of the White Ship itself for a whole book, especially when you write narrative history and don't spend endless pages considering your sources. So Spencer chooses instead to set the incident of the White Ship into the context of the history of Norman England from 1066 to 1154. But encapsulating 88 years into 300 pages leads to problems of brevity. This is especially true when trying to describe the dynastic battles in northern France between the mini-states of Normandy, Anjou, Maine and Flanders, among others' it is even more true when trying to follow the convoluted history of the Stephen-Matilda conflict in which many participants changed sides at least once. The result is a history which manages to be at once confusing and over-simplistic. The book was a disappointment compared to Spencer's other forays into narrative history: Blenheim and Prince Rupert.
Of course, mediaeval history relies on just a few chronicled sources, so there are insufficient details in the story of the White Ship itself for a whole book, especially when you write narrative history and don't spend endless pages considering your sources. So Spencer chooses instead to set the incident of the White Ship into the context of the history of Norman England from 1066 to 1154. But encapsulating 88 years into 300 pages leads to problems of brevity. This is especially true when trying to describe the dynastic battles in northern France between the mini-states of Normandy, Anjou, Maine and Flanders, among others' it is even more true when trying to follow the convoluted history of the Stephen-Matilda conflict in which many participants changed sides at least once. The result is a history which manages to be at once confusing and over-simplistic. The book was a disappointment compared to Spencer's other forays into narrative history: Blenheim and Prince Rupert.