Johmathan Sumption

Nel corso degli ultimi tre decenni le democrazie consolidate hanno subito, per diverse ragioni, un significativo calo di legittimazione. Le contestazioni popolari all’operato dei Parlamenti hanno portato in molti a pensare che fossero i tribunali l’arena deputata a risolvere, con rapidità ed efficacia, i problemi sociali via via emergenti. Da parte loro, i giudici sembrano aver assecondato questa tendenza, reclamando una sorta di autorità di supervisione su altri organi dello Stato, ben al di là delle prerogative loro concesse dalle carte costituzionali. Con dovizia di esempi mutuati dalle sentenze delle corti britanniche, statunitensi ed europee e attraverso uno stile argomentativo lineare quanto arguto, il libro riflette su questo processo e sui pericoli insiti in una visione della politica e del diritto che alteri i contrappesi tipici dei sistemi democratici avanzati, pregiudicandone la tenuta con gravi rischi per la loro stessa sostenibilità, oggi come nel futuro prossimo.

The eagerly anticipated final volume in Jonathan Sumption’s prize-winning history of the Hundred Years War, "one of the great historical undertakings of our age." ― Dan Jones, Sunday Times

A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

'Compulsively readable' (History), this is the first volume in a series that details the long and violent endeavour of the English to dismember Europe's strongest state, a succession of wars that is one of the seminal chapters in European history. Beginning with the funeral of Charles IV of France in 1328, it follows the Hundred Years War up to the surrender of Calais in 1347. It traces the early humiliations and triumphs of Edward III: the campaigns of Sluys, Crecy and Calais, which first made his name as a war leader and the reputation of his subjects as the most brutally effective warriors of their time.

Divided Houses is a tale of contrasting fortunes. In the last decade of his reign Edward III, a senile, pathetic symbol of England's past conquests, was condemned to see them overrun by the armies of his enemies. When he died, in 1377, he was succeeded by a vulnerable child, who was destined to grow into a neurotic and unstable adult presiding over a divided nation. Meanwhile France entered upon one of the most glittering periods of her medieval history, years of power and ceremony, astonishing artistic creativity and famous warriors making their reputations as far afield as Naples, Hungary and North Africa.