This is the fascinating story of the French regime in Canada. Few periods in the history of North America can equal it for romance and color, drama and suspense, great human courage and far-seeing aspiration. Costain, who writes history in the terms of the people who lived it, wrote of this book: "Almost from the first I found myself caught in the spell of these courageous, colorful, cruel days. But whenever I found myself guilty of overstressing the romantic side of the picture and forgetful of the more prosaic life beneath, I tried to balance the scales more properly. [This] is...a conscientious effort at a balanced picture of a period which was brave, bizarre, fanatical, lyrical, lusty, and, in fact, rather completely unbalanced."
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"I cannot put this book down and I am looking forward to the others written about the Plantagenets of England. There is much information about their lives, and the history they were creating. Henry 11...Richard the Lionheart...Thomas a' Becket...for starters. I love these books "
— ROSALIE (5 out of 5 stars)
" I can't get enough of British historical fiction, British royal history, etc (after all, I am half English in heritage, the other half is Italian); however, this was just wayyyy too dry, even for me "
— MzDivaDawn, 8/13/2010" I tried to listen to this but my head fell off because I was so BORED and the way that the history was presented was so overtly romantic and biased. "
— Ginger, 1/11/2010" Very good anecdotal history of the earliest plantagenet kings. This is part of a four book series and covers Henry II, Richard I and John. "
— Curt, 3/16/2009" A good read. Historical fiction about Plantagenet England. "
— Reuel, 2/8/2008" I'm not sure if this is considered fiction, but it reads like a novel. Actually, this is a series. The Three Edwards, The Last of the Plantagenets, and the Magnificent Century are a great intro to the history of England's kings. "
— Gay, 10/15/2007Thomas B. Costain (1885–1965) was born in Brantford. He attended high school there as well as the Brantford Collegiate Institute. His career as a writer began in 1902 when the Brantford Courier accepted a mystery story from him, and he became a reporter there (for five dollars a week). He was an editor at the Guelph Daily Mercury between 1908 and 1910. He married Ida Randolph Spragge on January 12, 1910 and they had two children. Beginning in 1914, he was a staff writer for and, from 1917, editor of Toronto-based Maclean’s magazine. His success there brought him to the attention of the Saturday Evening Post in New York City where he was fiction editor for fourteen years.
Simon Vance (a.k.a. Robert Whitfield) is an award-winning actor and narrator. He has earned more than fifty Earphones Awards and won the prestigious Audie Award for best narration thirteen times. He was named Booklist’s very first Voice of Choice in 2008 and has been named an AudioFile Golden Voice as well as an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009. He has narrated more than eight hundred audiobooks over almost thirty years, beginning when he was a radio newsreader for the BBC in London. He is also an actor who has appeared on both stage and television.