At the same time, however, several points should be conceded. Like the lecturing professor I've mentioned a time or two now, there’s an awful lot of knowledge packed into Cantor's head. Reading The Last Knight may be a scattershot, shotgun affair, but there’s a lot of information packed into its slender pages. Some of it may be debatable (for example, whether Gaunt's "legacy" really ought to include any particular blame for the institution of slavery, which did not occur for almost two hundred years after his death). And there's considerable grist for thought about Gaunt, a man who could never be king and who was largely demonized by Shakespeare as the founder of the Lancastrian branch of the royal family. Cantor suggests that Gaunt did far less to unseat his nephew, Richard II, than many have contended, and that Gaunt was in fact doing his best to prop his nephew up until his death. After his death, however, Richard was not so fortunate: Gaunt's son deposed Richard and became Henry IV.
There is a measure of fascination associated with watching how the many strands of social culture can intersect. I question some of Cantor's assumptions about Gaunt as the "playboy warrior," largely because Cantor's conclusions are frequently based on supposition or speculation rather than actual fact. Flawed though it may be, however, one can still learn a great deal about the Middle Ages and English nobility from The Last Knight.
Edited: PC
Article comments
1 - DrPat
I'm also reading this book, and finding it rough going - thanks for encapsulating why, in your review! I have found the organization of the book into topics its most redeeming feature - when the "Women" topic got a bit convoluted, I jumped forward to "Warriors."
('Course, I missed several pages of pictures when I did...)
2 - DrPat
How weird is it that the book's picture editor, Judy Cantor, is listed as the author by Amazon!
3 - Victor Plenty
Amazon does that a lot. Nobody seems to know why.
4 - Bill Wallo
I wrote a book review a few months back where the Amazon information was all screwed up - you ran a search for the book, and what you got was a link to another author and title. Gremlins, I guess. :)
5 - Judy Perry
It is indeed unfortunate to hear that the menage-a-trois story with respect to John of Gaunt, Philippa Roet Chaucer and Katherine Roet Swynford is regrettably being repeated.
H. A. Kelly has rather neatly dispatched that particular argument. It would have been incest, and, given Gaunt's petition for the marriage and legitimation of Katherine and her Beauforts, rather damnably so.
As for there being 'slender' materials for a biography of John of Gaunt, apparently neither Sydney Armitage-Smith nor Anthony Goodman has found it so.
Sigh.
Judy
katherineswynford.blogspot.com