Following on from her highly successful book on Agincourt, Juliet Barker gives us a pacy narrative history of the subsequent fortunes of the English in France, taking the story down to the loss of Normandy in the 1450s. Whilst the focus is overwhelmingly military, events (or the lack of them) in the field were to a large extent determined by political clashes, with France divided between Armagnac and Burgundian and England enduring first a long minority and then the weak and vacilating rule of Henry VI, and these too are explained well. There is less emphasis on the financial dimensions of the war, more important perhaps than any other factor in explaining England's eventual defeat. But this should not detract from the fact that the book is a cracking read, impressively detailed and packed full of colourful anecdotes and characters.