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A review by klopnis
The White Ship: Conquest, Anarchy and the Wrecking of Henry I's Dream by Charles Spencer
informative
slow-paced
3.0
As other reviewers have pointed out, over half of The White Ship is devoted to context, providing an overview of the preceding half-century or so of Norman rule. Given that I picked the book up not for this zoomed-out view, but instead for a more in-depth exploration of the accident itself and the immediate aftermath, I found myself a little disappointed.
The chapter covering the accident itself was great, but that’s all it was—a chapter—and the one before it was a rather tedious list of all the various names of people who happened to be in Barfleur that day, whether they were travelling on the White Ship or not.
On a positive note, I did quite enjoy the coverage of the Anarchy in the final quarter of the book. I think this book might be a valuable reference for academics, and I appreciated the citations throughout. But as a book for the general reader, I’m afraid it falls a little short, and I say this as a fan of other narrative history books like The Plantagenets and The Hollow Crown by Dan Jones. Nevertheless, I do not begrudge the time I spent reading this book.
The chapter covering the accident itself was great, but that’s all it was—a chapter—and the one before it was a rather tedious list of all the various names of people who happened to be in Barfleur that day, whether they were travelling on the White Ship or not.
On a positive note, I did quite enjoy the coverage of the Anarchy in the final quarter of the book. I think this book might be a valuable reference for academics, and I appreciated the citations throughout. But as a book for the general reader, I’m afraid it falls a little short, and I say this as a fan of other narrative history books like The Plantagenets and The Hollow Crown by Dan Jones. Nevertheless, I do not begrudge the time I spent reading this book.