THE GREATEST KNIGHT The Remarkable Life of William Marshal, the Power Behind Five English Thrones

Derek Perkins skillfully narrates Asbridge’s history of the exemplary twelfth-century knight William Marshall, whose story survives in a single, long-lost chronicle. Marshall rode and fought with Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine and their sons—Henry, Richard the Lionheart, and John—and his career paralleled the emerging codes of valor and chivalry. Perkins’s voice has something of the medieval in it, and he easily fills the contours of a narrative that ranges from the manufacture of knight’s armor to its bloody use on the field of battle. Here is Arthurian legend at its core—and one of the year’s true sleepers. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine [Published: MAY 2015]