Sceptred Isle

A sweeping look at an era of upheaval, panic and change. Gripping, powerful history.

Hallie Rubenhold

A cannily timed new history... [Sceptred Isle] tells the story of the 14th-century Plantagenets with verve.

The Times

A highly engaging re-evaluation of a tumultuous century.

Observer

Informative, anecdotal and entertaining... So many of the events of that tumultuous century find echoes today.

Financial Times

Gripping... Carr is an eloquent guide to the human realities of a century that often has a hallucinatory quality: vivid, desperate and haunting in its glories and its terrors.

Spectator

Fast-paced and thrilling... a remarkably evocative account of the high drama, excessive bloodshed and significant societal change during this tumultuous age... hugely enjoyable.

Country Life

Excellent.

Clive Anderson, Loose Ends (BBC Radio4)

In this vivid, finely researched book, Helen Carr takes us deep into England’s deadly fourteenth century and finds life and human colour. This is a sparkling popular history which brings the Middle Ages' most terrible century to life for a new generation.

Dan Jones

Full of colour, with headlong energy, Sceptred Isle brings England’s calamitous fourteenth century to life vividly. While Fortune’s Wheel turns through cycles of famine, plague and war, Helen Carr’s engrossing narrative never loses sight of the complexity, and hope, of human experience.

Helen Castor

I didn't want to do anything but read this book for a fortnight. Helen Carr is one of the most talented and compelling historians of her generation.

Sathnam Sanghera

Thoughtful and dramatic, this is a lesser known period of history told with the pace and fluency of a novel.

Philippa Gregory

Helen Carr is one of our foremost historians and we are so lucky to have her explaining how we got here.

Elizabeth Day

An epic new history of some of the most dramatic decades in England’s past. This book is a triumph - a thrilling narrative history, guided by the expertise of one of our leading historians. Essential reading for anyone hoping to understand the remarkable world of our medieval ancestors.

Alice Loxton

Gripping, fascinating, beautifully written and deeply researched, this marvellous book takes you right to the cradle of England, the stunning story of the country in its early days. Exciting, new, endlessly engaging.

Kate Williams

In this stunningly evocative, immensely enjoyable history of the fourteenth century, Carr proves equally adept at centring women’s experiences as writing battles.

Suzannah Lipscomb, author of A Visitor's Companion to Tudor England

A fast-paced tour of the reigns of three very different Plantagenet kings, full of chivalrous knights, canny queens, plotting earls and gossipy chroniclers. Conjures all the drama and intrigue of this seismic century of English political history.

Seb Falk, author of The Light Ages

Carr offers an engrossing, compelling guide to the fourteenth century - the great Plantagenet supernova - and I devoured it like a hungry heraldic leopard.

Amy Jeffs, author of Storyland: A New Mythology of Britain

Enlivened by vivid descriptions and enriched by appreciating the human factor in events, Sceptred Isle gives a clear and compelling account of a tumultuous period.

David Carpenter, Professor of Medieval History, King's College London

The fourteenth century is brought to life in this evocative, gripping and carefully researched narrative. This is a must read for anyone wanting to understand this tumultuous period.

Kavita Puri, multi-award-winning journalist and chair of the Women's Prize for Non-fiction 2025

One of the most exciting new voices in narrative history.

Dan Jones on The Red Prince

Superb, gripping and fascinating, here is John of Gaunt and a cast of kings, killers and queens brought blazingly, sensitively and swashbucklingly to life. An outstanding debut.

Simon Sebag Montefiore on The Red Prince