Richard I Penguin Monarchs

'Here is the English sovereign as a crusader, battling on the fringes of the known world; the warrior-king . . imbued with the heart of a lion'Even within his own lifetime Richard I, dubbed the 'Lionheart', attained a kind of semi-mythical status as a paragon of chivalry, yet his reign is both controversial and full of contradictions. Seeking to reconcile the conflicting evidence, Thomas Asbridge's incisive reappraisal of Richard I's career questions how the memory of his life came to be interwoven with myth. ''Here is the English sovereign as a crusader, battling on the fringes of the known world; the warrior-king . . imbued with the heart of a lion''Even within his own lifetime Richard I, dubbed the ''Lionheart'', attained a kind of semi-mythical status as a paragon of chivalry, yet his reign is both controversial and full of contradictions. Seeking to reconcile the conflicting evidence, Thomas Asbridge''s incisive reappraisal of Richard I''s career questions how the memory of his life came to be interwoven with myth.