RICHARD THE LION HEART. By Kate Norgate. (Mac:
millan. 16s.) ' I This book is a welcome addition to Miss Norgate's well- known series of studies of the Angevin kings. Her intention, as she explains, is not to write a history of England during Richard's reign, but to tell the life story of a prince, whose name is writ almost as large in romance as in history. The Lion Heart has inspired novelists as different as Walter Scott and Maurice Hewlett ; Miss Nor-gate approaches him from the more sober standpoint of the historian, but she makes it plain enough why he has been such a gold mine to romancers. She gives a fully documented account of his life as Duke of Aquitaine before becoming king, as also of those last years when he was building Chateau Gaillard to infuriate Philip of France. But she naturally devotes most space -to what he
• himself regarded as his great achievement, the Third Crusade. We see him raising money in England (when "all things were for sale with him—powers, lordships, earldoms, sheriffdoms, castles, towns and manors "), collecting his fleet of galleys, " dromonds " and smacks, packing and unpacking his siege instruments, helping with his own hands to rebuild the walls of Ascalon. quarrelling with the jealous king of France, exchanging courtesies with Saladin, fighting like a lion, and
• finally being taken captive in Austria on his way home, as every child in the nursery knows. The story is familiar, but it loses nothing in the telling, and Miss Norgate has written not only the standard biography of Richard I., but the best full-dress study of the Third Crusade.
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