Benedict King's Reading List

"On 23 May this year, the day of the European elections that were never supposed to happen, Jacob Rees-Mogg, member of parliament and the presiding genius of the anti-EU European Reform Group, published his first book, The Victorians: Twelve Titans who Forged Britain . The book has been widely panned as “staggeringly silly” and very bad history. But Rees-Mogg is not really writing history, he’s got completely carried away by his political axe. His book is history as half-veiled self-portrait and half-veiled election address. Its real, unwritten title is: Jacob Rees-Mogg, 21st Century Titan ."

"He’s not the only one on our list to indulge in history as personal manifesto. Boris Johnson wrote a book published in 2015 on Winston Churchill, The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History. Johnson canters through Churchill’s career, outlining the continuing relevance of the great man’s attitude to Europe, the US and the Middle East, amongst other things. Johnson’s thesis is that Churchill may have had faults and made mistakes, but on all the big issues he called it right and that, as a politician, he had a unique combination of personal qualities – bravery, industry, eloquence and, when necessary, ruthlessness – that put him in a league of his own. The subtext bubbles up from every page: The Churchill Factor: Why I Have it in Spades . Of course, such self-promotion need not necessarily matter. The Johnson book is a great read and that self-promotion – and ability to write – is something Boris Johnson certainly does share with his hero. Churchill himself was perfectly frank about the purpose of his literary efforts – he was going to be viewed kindly by history because he was going to write it. That didn’t stop him winning the Nobel Prize in Literature."

"In spite of the hazards, a number of serving Tory MPs, with plenty to play for politically, have managed to write highly readable history books that are not brazen vehicles of self-promotion. Jesse Norman (currently deciding whether or not to join the Tory leadership contest) has written a biography of Edmund Burke that fits into this category. The book is divided into two sections, one covering Burke’s life, the second his thought. In conclusion he offers six lessons Burke has to teach modern conservatism. There is an inevitable and unashamed element of hagiography about the exercise, and one can well imagine the six lessons providing the bedrock for Norman’s assault on the leadership of the Tory party, but the whole effect is not at all laboured. His new book about Adam Smith is out now. We haven’t read it yet, but we will."

"Kwasi Kwarteng’s Ghosts of Empire: British Legacies in the Modern World does not paint a rose-tinted view of the past or view the rulers of the British Empire as titans. Quite the contrary. He may be thinking about the role of US imperialism in the modern world, but his book is saved from facile comparisons by his scepticism about the merits of imperialism in general, and the failings of the British Empire in particular. He looks at the British role in Iraq after the First World War, British involvement in Kashmir and the annexation of Burma and locates the chronic political malaise of these and other territories in the failures of British policy in the 19th and early 20th century. In turn he roots these failures in the British attempt to govern through local elites in harness with a small and very self-consciously elite British ruling class. The resulting system was far from democratic and left too much to the whim of individual politicians, civil servants and soldiers, whose often capricious and short-term handling of events on the ground had deleterious long-term consequences. The lesson is that the past sometimes holds no obvious lessons."

"Chris Skidmore MP has published three books on early modern English history. The most recent, Richard III: Brother, Protector, King has been well reviewed and went down very well with our editor here at Five Books, Sophie, who admired its use of primary sources. There is no very obvious contemporary resonance, as there is with our other authors, although part of Skidmore’s thesis is that even if Richard III wasn’t responsible for killing his nephews, many people thought he was and so swapped sides. Certainly his reign and its termination at Bosworth offer Skidmore’s ambitious colleagues a lesson in how not to conduct a leadership campaign."

"That’s a complete no-brainer. Of all the books you could turn to, Diarmaid MacCulloch ’s 2018 biography, Thomas Cromwell: A Life , is the place to start. The book got rave reviews, including from Hilary Mantel. (Indeed, they have both spoken admiringly of each other’s work and and have even done a double act interview, talking about Cromwell .) Previously MacCulloch has written histories of the Reformation and of Christianity , and a biography of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer . He’s particularly good on Cromwell’s religion and the religious dimension of his statecraft. That is an aspect of the story that earlier constitutional historians, like Geoffrey Elton, underplayed, or saw as a subordinate aspect of the story. He’s also fascinating on how Cromwell’s early career, working for Cardinal Wolsey, provided the perfect apprenticeship for his career as chief minister in the 1530s. It’s a very scholarly book but highly readable. Yes, you do, and, no, it won’t. The politics of the Reformation are extremely complex. It’s easy to read a book like MacCulloch’s on Thomas Cromwell, enjoy it, put it down and then, when someone asks you to explain how Cromwell achieved what he achieved, or why he fell from power, to find oneself completely stumped. It’s not a shortcoming of the book, but it’s helpful to break the story down into its component parts. If you’re going to understand Thomas Cromwell’s statecraft, you need to understand the structure of the state and how that was changed. You also need to understand the Church, both how the pre-Reformation Church fitted in with the secular structures of the state and how the Reformation changed that, and also a bit about the theological and ecclesiological disputes of the Reformation. On top of all that you need to understand the domestic and international politics of the Reformation. They were often very closely linked. The rest of my book choices deal with these different aspects of the story."

"This is the book to help you understand the structure of the state. The book is broken down into chapters on the Crown, the Council, financial administration, the courts, Parliament, the Church and local government. That may sound a bit boring, but actually this is very well put together and extremely accessible. Each chapter comprises a selection of original documents with a very helpful—and short!— introduction by the doyen of Tudor constitutional historians, Geoffrey Elton. It isn’t a great read in the way the MacCulloch book on Thomas Cromwell is. But Cromwell was a brilliant politician because he mastered the machinery of British government. If you’re going to understand his historical importance you have to go some way to mastering that machinery yourself. I think the other thing I’d say about the way this book is structured, is that the documents are easy to read, and their relevance is always highlighted in Elton’s introductory commentary, so you don’t have to work that hard. Also, reading extracts of the original documents brings the politics and government of the age vividly to life. You get a great sense of just what a grind it was getting anything done. And, of course, that in itself gives one a greater appreciation of the achievements of someone like Cromwell."

"The Elton book helps you understand the “state” part of Thomas Cromwell’s statecraft. This book helps you understand the “craft” aspect. In other words, Cromwell’s talent specifically as a politician. Lehmberg is great at showing how Cromwell was very important in the Reformation Parliament, right from its inception in 1529, long before he was a prominent figure on the King’s Council. He was an exceptionally cunning politician. Particularly in the early part of the Parliament, when conservative forces were very strong, his management and sequencing of the legislative programme was masterful. You get the impression that he had Henry VIII round his little finger. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . But there’s another thing about this book that I find incredibly helpful. The Reformation Parliament lasted for nearly seven years and transformed England’s religious life. But it was a slow process. If you just look at a sequence of big headline events, the calling of the Parliament, the resignation of Thomas More, the declaration of the royal supremacy, the execution of More and John Fisher, the Boleyn marriage, the Pilgrimage of Grace, the various shifts in doctrinal position, it is hard to understand why these things happened when they did and why. The engine that drove all of these events was the legislative programme of Parliament. This book really helps one understand the constitutional mechanisms and innovations that were used to push through the Reformation in England by looking at the work of the Reformation Parliament from beginning to end, rather than in a thematic way. It shows how the machinery of Court, Council, Church and Parliament actually interacted and drove the political drama."

"This is a brilliant book. Like MacCulloch’s it is scholarly, but reads like a novel. Guy is excellent on both the political and religious origins of the Reformation. But, perhaps above all, he is brilliant on the high politics of the reign, both domestic and international, crucial threads to the story. You can’t understand Cromwell’s project and its trajectory without understanding its vulnerability to both domestic and international opposition. This book will help you understand, in particular, how shifting international alliances in response to the Reformation had a crucial impact on the course of English political history during the 1530s and, in the end, provided the international context that brought about Thomas Cromwell’s fall. Dreadfully, in my opinion, although the book is absolutely not a hatchet job. Henry VIII is widely agreed to be one of the greatest of English monarchs. This book provides a very convincing picture that that assessment is woefully at odds with the reality. Henry emerges as a politician quite incapable of thinking strategically, but blown hither and thither by events. He left a country completely divided religiously and never managed to make up his mind about what he wanted the English Church to look like. He wanted to be a great martial prince-hero like Henry V, but his early military expeditions to France were a complete farce. In the 1520s he wanted a papal title and wrote works against Luther, praising the papal supremacy. Thomas More suggested he tone down his papalism, but he refused. Every schoolchild knows he executed two of his wives, but during the late 1530s and early 1540s he also executed a whole swathe of his extended cousinage because he was terrified they would conspire with overseas powers to depose him and restore the papal allegiance. His most able servants, Cromwell, More and Bishop John Fisher were executed. Wolsey died in disgrace. He also executed one of the greatest poets of the age, the Earl of Surrey (although, to be fair to Henry, not because he didn’t like his poetry). One of the greatest duties of a king is to provide an heir. Henry married six times and produced one sickly male heir who died young and without issue. It’s an extraordinary record of ineptitude and failure. If you take a favourable view of the Reformation, then there were real constitutional achievements, but as all these books show, Cromwell was really the mastermind of that process. Henry was a bad man and a bad King: vain, stupid, and capricious. That doesn’t stop him being a fascinating biographical study. Quite the contrary."

"This book tells the story of the Reformation in London. It covers a longer period than the 1530s, but gives a good sense of what was happening on the ground and the intense divisions in society that the Reformation provoked. You can read about the high politics of the period in the other four books. This book will give you a sense of how decisions at the top played out on the street. If you’re looking for a discussion of the impact of the Reformation on the broader country, then go to Eamon Duffy’s The Stripping of the Altars ."