RICHARD COEUR DE LION By Clennell Wilkinson
matter from that section of English history which' we call The life of Richard Ccieur de Lion is 'a surprisingly different Richard I, 1189-1199. Richard was probably the most successful absentee that has ever lived : always busy about his own pastimes, besieging some fortress in Aquitaine or some port in the Holy Land, and yet growing steadily more popular in the kingdom he neglected. Why he was so popular, and what an enjoyable affair he made of his life (as distinct from his reign), Mr. Clennell Wilkinson tells, briefly but expertly, in his new short biography Richard Coeur de Lion (Peter Davies, :is.). His rages,-his foolhardiness, his good humour, his generosity, his determination, and his invincible courage, were all part of the forceful personality which made him above everything a sportsman. He had to have some outlet for his energies, and iwarfare Was Preferred; The Crugades, which took him from 'profitless family bickerings in his duchy of Aquitaine, were an absolute godsend. Mr. Wilkinson describes his doings as vividly as if he had large numbers of eyewitness' accounts to go on, instead of a few contemporary chronicles and his own knowledge of the present-day Mediterranean. Without any concession to the twopence-coloured school of biography, he makes a good story of a good subject. He does justice to Richard's genius for. military architecture (witness Chateau- Gaillard), and also .to his occasional surprising subtlety. The climax of Richard's life, as he sees it, was at Natroun in 1192, when he let himself be convinced that it was impossible to take Jerusalem. It seemed the only conclusion : and yet, if he had been just a little more unreasonable, and gone on, he might have won back the Holy Sepulchre—with what effects upon history it is interesting, if perfectly useless, t, sreculate.
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