From Shakespeare to The Beatles, the battle of Agincourt has
dominated the cultural landscape as one of the most famous battles
in British history. Anne Curry seeks to find out how and why the
legacy of Agincourt has captured the popular imagination. Agincourt
(1415) is an exceptionally famous battle, one that has generated a
huge and enduring cultural legacy in the six hundred years since it
was fought. Everybody thinks they know what the battle was about.
Even John Lennon, aged 12, wrote a poem and drew a picture headed
'Agincourt'. But why and how has Agincourt come to mean so much, to
so many? Why do so many people claim their ancestors served at the
battle? Is the Agincourt of popular image the real Agincourt, or is
our idea of the battle simply taken from Shakespeare's famous
depiction of it? Written by the world's leading expert on the
battle, this book shows just why it has occupied such a key place
in English identity and history in the six centuries since it was
fought, exploring a cultural legacy that stretches from bowmen to
Beatles, via Shakespeare, Dickens, and the First World War. Anne
Curry first sets the scene, illuminating how and why the battle was
fought, as well as its significance in the wider history of the
Hundred Years War. She then takes the Agincourt story through the
centuries from 1415 to now, from the immediate, and sometimes
surprising, responses to it on both sides of the Channel, through
its reinvention by Shakespeare in King Henry V (1599), and the
enduring influence of both the play and the film versions of it,
especially the patriotic Laurence Olivier version of 1944, at the
time of the D-Day landings in Normandy. But the legacy of Agincourt
does not begin and end with Shakespeare's play: from the eighteenth
century onwards, on both sides of the Channel and in both the
English and French speaking worlds the battle was used as an
explanation of national identity, giving rise to jingoistic works
in print and music. It was at this time that it became fashionable
for the gentry to identify themselves with the victory, and in the
Victorian period the Agincourt archer came to be emphasized as the
epitome of 'English freedom'. Indeed, even today, historians
continue to 'refight' the battle.
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