Desmond Seward
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Desmond Eric Christopher Seward (22 May 1935 – 3 April 2022) was an Anglo-Irish popular historian and the author of many books, including biographies of Henry IV of France, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Marie Antoinette, Empress Eugénie and Napoleon's family. He specialised in Britain and France in the late Middle Ages.
Biography
Seward's father was William Eric Louis Seward, MC (1891–1975), a Franco-Irishman and industrialist in France whose experiences as a World War I aviator in Palestine were documented by his son in Wings over the Desert (2009). Born in Paris into a family long established at Bordeaux, Desmond Seward was educated at Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire and at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. He wrote extensively on medieval France and about the military religious orders on which he was considered an authority. Seward was fluent in French and read Italian, Latin, medieval English and Norman French. He was noted for conducting research on primary sources at relevant foreign locations, and wrote historically-oriented travel books. His work was translated into ten languages, including Hebrew and Japanese.[1]
He lived in the English countryside on the Berkshire-Wiltshire border. He died on 3 April 2022 at the age of 86. A
Critical reception
Seward's work was generally well received by critics as offering a balance of readability and modern scholarship. The First Bourbon (1971), a biography of
The Hundred Years War: The English in France 1337–1453 (1978) was rated "a well written narrative, beautifully illustrated, and which takes into account most recent research. It is also a good read." in the view of Richard Cobb writing in the New Statesman. The New Yorker noted that "Mr Seward shows us all the famous sights of those roaring times ...and illuminates them with an easy scholarship, a nice sense of detail ... and a most agreeable clarity of style."
Richard III: England's Black Legend (1983) proved controversial because of the author's rejection of the modern argument that Richard's 'black legend' was no more than Tudor propaganda. Members of the Richard III Society took issue with Seward's description of the king as 'a peculiarly grim young English precursor of Machiavelli's Prince'.
Seward, a conservative
Reviewing Renishaw Hall: The Story of the Sitwells (2015) in the
In 2019 Seward produced what was regarded by some critics as one of his best works, The King Over the Water, a history of the Jacobites.[8]
Bibliography
Books
- The First Bourbon: Henri IV, King of France and Navarre (1971)
- The Monks of War: The Military Religious Orders (1972)
- Prince of the Renaissance (1973)
- The Bourbon Kings of France (1976)
- Eleanor of Aquitaine (1978)
- The Hundred Years' War (1978)
- Monks and Wine (1979)
- Marie Antoinette (1981)
- Richard III (1983)
- Naples (1984)
- Italy's Knights of St George (1986)
- Napoleon's Family (1986)
- Henry V (Henry V as Warlord; 1987)
- Napoleon and Hitler (1988)
- Byzantium (with Susan Mountgarret, 1988)
- Metternich (1991)
- Brooks's: A Social History (jt ed with Philip Ziegler, 1991)
- The Dancing Sun: Journeys to the Miracle Shrines (1993)
- Sussex (1995)
- The Wars of the Roses (1995)
- Caravaggio (1998)
- Eugénie (2004)
- Savonarola (2006)
- Jerusalem's Traitor (2009)
- Also called: Josephus, Masada and the Fall of Judaea (da Capo, US, April 2009)
- Wings over the Desert: In Action with an RFC pilot in Palestine, 1916–18 (2009)
- Old Puglia: A Portrait of South Eastern Italy (with Susan Mountgarret, 2009)
- The Last White Rose: The Spectre at the Tudor Court, 1485–1547 (2010; aka The Last White Rose: The Secret Wars of the Tudors).
- The Demon's Brood: A History of the Plantagenet Dynasty (2014)
- Renishaw Hall: "The Story of the Sitwells" (2015)
- The King Over the Water: A Complete History of the Jacobites (2019)
Book reviews
Date | Review article | Work(s) reviewed |
---|---|---|
2013 | "[Untitled review]". Reviews. History Today. 63 (11): 62–63. November 2013. Retrieved 21 November 2015. | De Lisle, Leanda (2013). Tudor : the family story. London: Chatto & Windus. |
References
- ^ "Home". desmondseward.com.
- ^ "Seward". Telegraph. 13 April 2022. Archived from the original on 16 April 2022. Retrieved 13 April 2022.
- ^ McLynn, Frank, "Maybe the Sun Dances, Maybe Saucers Fly"; The Independent; Tuesday, 22 June 1993.
- ^ London Evening Standard, 30 December 1993.
- ^ The Tablet, 26 June 1993.
- ^ Sunday Times, 28 June 2015.
- ^ The Literary Review, August 2015.
- ^ Hugh MacDonald (28 September 2019). "Review: The King Over the Water: A Complete History of the Jacobites". Herald Scotland. Retrieved 13 April 2022.