“Henry V was a hard act to follow. A renowned warrior king, he triumphed at Agincourt, conquered large swathes of France and secured the French throne for his son and heir – all before dying at 35.
By any measure Henry VI did not live up to his father’s example. In fact, as Lauren Johnson writes in this month’s cover feature, his reign “reads like a Top Trumps of failure”. So why couldn’t Henry VI match up to his illustrious father, and how far was the elder Henry to blame for the disasters that followed? These are the questions Lauren seeks to answer in her piece, beginning on page 22.