I want to say at the start that I think Anne Curry is one of, if not the, most important scholars working on the Hundred Years War. Her work on the prosopography of medieval soldiers is truly astonishing and she has collaborated with many excellent scholars to put out an amazing body of work. That all having been said, it is a black mark on her record that she has written two different books titled The Hundred Years War. I am of the opinion that authors should entirely cease titling their books The Hundred Years War, it is becoming impossible to find them among the sea of identically titled books, but to have one author write two such books is beyond the pale.
The first is the Osprey history of the conflict, a light introduction that is perfectly suited to its target market. I have nothing much to say on it, it is one of Osprey’s better books but still far from my go to recommendation for a history of the conflict. The book I am reviewing is her other book titled The Hundred Years War, this one published by Palgrave with a more academic audience in mind. Having read it now I have to say that I was really impressed, Curry does a lot with what is overall quite a short work and I think this, as much as it will annoy me to actually do it, will be one of my preferred recommendations for an introductory work on the subject. If you’re reading this for some reason Prof Curry, I want you to know that I blame you for all the times I will have to say “You should read Anne Curry’s The Hundred Years War, but not that book called The Hundred Years War, I mean the one published by Palgrave.”
Let’s start with the basics. This is very much a political history of the conflict, you won’t find deep dives into the cultural or linguistic aspects of the Hundred Years War. Instead, this is a detailed but brief study of the main political questions that dominated the conflict, including probably the most coherent explanation of the war’s origins, and the thorny question of why we lump these conflicts together into one “war” and not earlier or later ones, that I have ever read. Over the past year I have read at least half a dozen histories of the Hundred Years War, and many more histories about specific aspects of the conflict, and none have come close to explaining the context and ideas of the war as Curry does in this book. Sumption’s enormous history does a comparable job in terms of getting the details right, but in distilling it down to a fraction of the pages Curry makes it much easier to follow.
That having been said, this will not be dethroning David Green’s The Hundred Years War: A People’s History (thank god for a sub-title – it’s not hard people!) as my preferred recommendation for all audiences. I think Green’s book is a better history for most people as he covers a much wider swath of the war and culture of the period. You get a lot more with Green, and you should because his book is probably three times the length of Curry’s. However, Curry’s book is one of the best introductions for anyone who is interested in seriously studying The Hundred Years War. Don’t get me wrong, Curry is a great writer and anyone can read this book. It is not reserved for the ivory tower of academia. However, the types of questions it addresses, the way it engages with historiography, all of these things make this is a great on ramp for understanding the study of the Hundred Years War and the types of questions that have been widely debated by previous scholars.
While I wouldn’t say that this should be your first book on The Hundred Years War, although you could do much worse, I think that if you are planning to make a study of the Hundred Years War you absolutely should make it the second or third book that you read. Alternatively, if you are interested in historiography and thorny questions like “why do we call this period of Anglo-French warfare the Hundred Years War?” or “how series about becoming Kings of France were the English monarchs?” this is a great introductory text towards answering those questions.