In a sparkling, fast-paced narrative, Shakespeare's Kings chronicles the turbulent events that inspired Shakespeare's history plays, from Edward III to Richard III. In a time of uncertainty and incessant warfare - when the crown was constantly contested, alliances were made and broken, and the people rose up in revolt - this was the raw material that inspired Shakespeare's dramas. But what really happened between 1337 and 1485? Where did history stop and drama begin? John Julius Norwich establishes just how real Shakespeare's characters and events are and what liberties he took with the facts to entertain his audience. Shakespeare's Kings is an illuminating companion to history and to the richness of Shakespeare's imagination, with a body of work which still shapes our view of the past today.

John Julius Norwich, born in 1929, took a degree in French and Russian at New College, Oxford. In 1952 he joined the Foreign Service at the embassies in Belgrade and Beirut and with the British delegation to the Disarmament Conference at Geneva. In 1964 he resigned from the service in order to write. His many publications include A History of Venice and Byzantium and the New York Times bestseller Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy.Lord Norwich is former chairman of the Venice in Peril Fund, Honorary Trustee and Chair Emeritus of the World Monuments Fund and a former member of the Executive Committee of the National Trust. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Royal Geographic Society and the Society of Antiquaries, and a Commendatore of the Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana. He was made a CVO in 1993.He has written and presented some thirty historical documentaries for television, and is a regular lecturer on Venice and numerous other subjects.