The author of Richard III, The Last White Rose, and The Demon's Brood here gives us a radical new portrait of Henry V as a brilliant and brutal warmonger. In the course of the Hundred Years War, Henry V was the English figure most responsible for the mutual antipathy that existed between France and England, due in no small part to his habit of making total war, attacking civilians as well as soldiers, argues Desmond Seward. He presents Henry as a man of many contradictions—a perverse mix of fanatical religious orthodoxy and neurotic insecurity, stemming in part from the dubious nature of his claim to the English throne.