Hello and welcome to this special Christmas edition of the Battleground podcast.

With me, Saul David and Roger Morehouse.

Sadly, our regular co-host, Patrick Bishop, is otherwise engaged,

but in his stead I have a fabulous cast of guests to discuss the best history books of 2024.

They are Jesse Charles' award-winning historian,

whose books include God's traitor and The Siege of Loyalty House,

and Richard Foreman, author, digital publisher, an all-round literary impresario.

Welcome, everyone. Jesse, I think we'll start with you. We're not being prescriptive about how many books.

I think you're happy to talk about three, aren't you? Which one do you want to kick off with?

It's really hard. It's been a really good year, I think. But I'm going to go chronologically. It's Helen Castors, the eagle and the heart,

the tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV. Obviously, we know about them from Shakespeare.

They were first cousins. They were born within three months of each other in 1367. And Richard

the second had everything. He had birthright. He had the whole

country behind him, but he was an appalling tyrant. Henry IV had everything in terms of

being a good ruler, but he didn't have the birthright. And he usurps Richard the second, as we know

from Shakespeare. Helen writes this book so beautifully. It's their parallel

lives, but it's also a study she calls it in the psychology of power. And it feels very

contemporary. Lots of great battle scenes. She's always been good at them. I remember reviewing her

Joan of Art biography, and she was outstanding then. She still is now. It took her, I think,

a decade to write this book.

And you can tell the scholarship is impeccable. The writing as it always is with Helen is, is so,

it's hard to put your finger on why it's so good. It's so precise and elegant and graceful.

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