This is an excellent book about a most fascinating historical figure. I had never heard of this man before and am very surprised that no one had taken the time to put together more on him. This man came from being a nobody with few prospects other than what he would put together himself, to being basically one of the greatest sports figures of the middle ages. Not only was he exceptionally successful on the tournament route with his jousting prowess and swordsmanship, but he served four English Kings including King Henry II, Richard the Lionheart, King John, (think Robin Hood times here), and King Henry III. He was matched to one of the most wealthy heiresses of the time in his late forties and was married to her for 30 years, having at least ten children with her. I stumbled upon him while doing research on the Middle Ages and am surprised that in all the time Hollywood has done and re-done Robin Hood, no one thought William Marshall's life would be so fascinating. It is an old-fashioned read by a professor, but this book sheds light on the early start of chivalry and the business minded ideals of the tournaments, how one could achieve wealth even with few prospects. Would recommend the book to any interested in the Medieval Era.

This short book is an entrancing analysis of the nature of the knighthood at the apogee of chivalry. William Marshal was a major figure in 12th - 13th century Britain and France. The younger son of an English knight, he used his superb skills as a jouster and warrior to attract the patronage of the English crown and rise into the Baronage. At the end of his unusually long life, he was the Regent of England and one of the most powerful men in Western Europe. At his death, his family commissioned a lengthy, vernacular memorial poem which provides considerable biographical information. This poem, which may be the only surviving example of a fairly common genre, is a rich source of information about the life of knights like Marshal. The famous French medievalist Georges Duby uses the poem as a point of departure to describe several important facets of the life of knights during this period of Medieval history. Key features exposed by Duby are the importance of public ceremony in the life of the nobility, the nature of family structures, the feudal bond as a system of clientage and prestige, the difficulties of life at major courts, and the fissiparous and complex politics inherent in the feudal system. Duby is clearly fascinated by both this poem and the nature of knighthood and chivalry generally. He shows very well a number of the distinctly alien features of the conduct of the knightly class. These include the patriarchial attitudes towards children, the cavalier attitudes towards violence and the property of others, and the remarkably disadvantageous position of noble women - not quite chattels, but not much better situated. Written in an elegant and at times almost conversational style, this insightful book is a pleasure to read.

This is a very easy read. Fast paced, really no slow dry stretches that I so often find in history books. I had hoped Duby would include more of the actual primary source, which is the biography of Marshal commissioned by his son after the Marshal's death. Duby speaks to the biography and pulls out pieces here and there for color, but I would have liked to have read more of it. Having said that, this was one of the most entertaining and interesting books on knighthood and the Plantagenet era that I have come across. Marshal was a true player in the historical events of the time, and his rags to riches story is very engaging.

Georges Duby, among the most influential French scholars to bring the middle ages to life, based his "William Marshall: The Flower of Chivalry" on many sources. One of those needs special mention. "L'Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal" is a poem of more than 19,000 lines commissioned by the eldest of Marshall's five sons to celebrate the life of their father.

And what a life, rising from humble squire to become a champion in many tournaments and a feared warrior who ended his years as Regent of England after a lifetime at war. As a young knight William Marshall delivered Eleanor of Aquitaine from an ambush. She ransomed him and he joined her service. (See Duby's "Women of the Twelfth Century, Volume 1: Eleanor of Aquitaine and Six Others."

Next, William served Henry I and Henry's son, Young Henry: his tournament winnings repaid Young Henry's debts. After that, he took his sword to Palestine. And so, at length, he served Henry I once more, Richard Lionheart, King John and the boy-king Henry III.

It is no exaggeration to say that the real life of William Marshall exceeded the on-screen career of any Hollywood action hero, with no stunt doubles or special effects.

Duby puts more than William Marshall's career in brilliant context. His principal source, "L'Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal" was written, not in Latin, but in Anglo-Norman French. Duby explains its provenance. It remains the first major document of such length to be written in French. And more than likely the excellent poet who produced those 19,000 lines in octosyllabic couplets was writing in England!

Robert Fripp, Author,
"Power of a Woman. Memoirs of a turbulent life: Eleanor of Aquitaine"

I could not put this down,and read it straight through in one evening, albeit a long one. And I had just picked it up by chance on a give-away shelf in a coffee house. What a find!

William Marshal, a man of low birth, rose to serve five English kings, becoming Earl of Pembroke, and was named regent to the young Henry III. In telling his story as a wise and loyal servant, the author illuminates the whole period and the social institution that was chivalry. The prose writing is poetical, and surely a large measure of credit goes to the translation from French by Richard Howard. Since this occurs only a century and a half after the Norman conquest, much of ambience is French on its way to becoming English.

Since no facsimiles or photos of the "Marshal poem" were provided, I did find myself wondering if the poem was Duby's literary device, allowing him to "return" to this period and recreate Marshal's life. I have previously known nothing about Duby, so I hope I will be excused for this thought! For my part, it would not matter if it were, since the book is such an honest and colorful insight into the period.

It is precisely this kind of biography that brings history into focus around a compelling central character

As you may recall in the film A LION IN WINTER, there was a briefly seen character named "William" (played by Nigel Stock in the superlative 1968 version starring Peter O'Toole and Katherine Hepburn), the right-hand man of King Henry II, who fetched his master's sons, Richard and Geoffrey, and Henry's Queen Eleanor (imprisoned in England's Salisbury Tower) to the royal castle of Chinon in France for the 1183 Christmas court. This William was William Marshal, the subject of this small book (153 pages) of the same name by French medieval historian Georges Duby. The translated volume was published in 1985.

Marshal was a remarkable man, whose knightly career spanned roughly five decades, over which time he went from penniless knight to acting-King of England (when he served as Regent for the young Henry III). Over that period, he was a faithful servant to four kings (Henry II, Richard I, John, Henry III) and one almost-king, the Young King Henry, the eldest son of Henry II crowned and anointed heir in 1170, but who pre-deceased Ol' Dad in June of 1183. William, by then Earl of Pembroke, died in 1219.

Duby's interest lies in that facet of medieval feudalism called chivalry, and he admiringly uses Marshal's life to illustrate the subject. Indeed, the author's description of William's life seems sometimes oddly detached, as if describing a rat in a lab experiment. Georges uses as his primary source a biography of the man - twenty-seven parchment leaves containing 19,914 verses - commissioned by the family shortly after the earl's death, and which survived in its entirety to the present. The biography, "Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal", was written in French, a fact, I suspect, which was crucial in drawing Duby's attention to it.

The author takes great pains to point out that feudal society was a hierarchical one comprised of superimposed layers, and with an order, ostensibly intended by God, "based on the intermingled notions of inequality, service, and loyalty." For laymen, i.e. the non-Church nobility - from bottom to top, from knight to king - it was a complex web of relations of domesticity, consanguinity, vassalage, and politics. Duby's great accomplishment in WILLIAM MARSHAL: THE FLOWER OF CHIVALRY is reducing this complexity to a human level for the reader using Marshal as the poster boy.

With a knowledge of feudalism probably no greater than anyone with an average interest and instruction in Western history, I came away from this absolute gem of a book with a greater and satisfying understanding of five particular aspects of feudalism and chivalry: the loyalty expected of a vassal knight to his lord of the moment regardless of the latter's loyalty to his superior further up the ladder, the importance of tournaments to the knights' livelihoods, the role of increasing circulating specie in eroding the knights' class pretensions, the necessity of marriage to an heiress to move a bachelor knight up in societal rank (marriage = land = power), and the status of women, i.e. landed noble women, in this society run exclusively by men. Indeed, Marshal himself remained a bachelor - and, therefore, a relative non-entity - until he was almost fifty, at which time he married Isabel de Clare, a seventeen-year old orphaned heiress sequestered as a royal ward in the Tower of London for her own protection (like a gold bar in a bank vault), and who was granted to William by a dying Henry II. (At the time, Isabel, in terms of land, was the second richest woman in England.) After Henry died and his successor Richard confirmed the gift, Marshal hurried back to England from France in unseemly haste to wed, deflower, and claim his prize. Isabel, of course, had absolutely no say in the matter, a fact likely to infuriate modern-day feminists. In any case, Marshal lived long enough to father at least ten children by her, and it was via her patrimony that William became Earl of Pembroke.

One last note about THE LION IN WINTER. William's role in the film was perhaps a screenwriter's embellishment. At the time (Nov-Jan 1183), Marshal was likely still trying to attach to a new lord's household after the death of his previous employer, the Young King Henry, the previous summer. The fact that Henry, Jr. had been in rebellion against his father at the time of the former's death wasn't likely to help Marshal attach to the latter's retinue, a feat ensured success only after William spent two years on crusade in the Holy Land from 1185 to 1187.

I would unreservedly recommend WILLIAM MARSHAL to any casual or serious student of European feudalism during the reigns of the early Plantagenets.