James Cameron Stewart

Henry V is regarded as the great English hero. With his victory at Agincourt and his rigorous application of justice, he was elevated by Shakespeare into a champion of English nationalism. But does he deserve to be thought of as 'the greatest man who ever ruled England?' Here Ian Mortimer portrays the dramatic events of 1415, offering the fullest, most precise and least romanticised view we have of Henry and what he did.

King Henry IV survived at least eight plots to dethrone or kill him in the first six years of his reign. Such threats transformed him from hero to murderer, prepared to go to any lengths to save his family and throne. Against all the odds, however, he took a poorly ruled nation, established a new Lancastrian dynasty, and introduced the principle that a king must act in accordance with parliament.

At the end of almost every day of their fifty-five years of married life, the publicity-shy author Margaret Forster would ask the naturally gregarious and outgoing Hunter Davies to describe to her the highlights of his day in the worlds of journalism and publishing. In the six years that have elapsed since Margaret's death, Hunter has continued these conversations with his wife, regaling her with accounts of the events and developments in his life – domestic, social, romantic, book-related, health-related and others – through a sequence of 'Letters to Margaret’. The letters are pure Hunter Davies: a feast of gossipy stream-of-consciousness that weaves together strands of confession, self-mockery, anecdote and touching remembrance of married happiness with Margaret.

When you travel across the ocean on a boat, all your memories are washed away and you start a completely new life. That is how it is. There is no before. There is no history. The boat docks at the harbour and we climb down the gangplank and we are plunged into the here and now. Time begins. Davìd is the small boy who is always asking questions. Simón and Inés take care of him in their new town Estrella. He is learning the language; he has begun to make friends. He has the big dog Bolìvar to watch over him.

But he'll be seven soon and he should be at school. And so, Davìd is enrolled in the Academy of Dance. It's here, in his new golden dancing slippers, that he learns how to call down the numbers from the sky. But it's here too that he will make troubling discoveries about what grown-ups are capable of. 

Book 2 in the Jesus series.