1215: The Year of Magna Carta [Paperback]

As Danziger and co-author John Gillingham note near the end of the text, 'Denounced by the pope, rejected by the king, discarded by the rebels, by the end of 1215 Magna Carta was surely dead.' This was a document that was more important in hindsight and in precedent than in actual effect. The political situation in England was precarious for most participants in 1215, and civil strife close to civil war was not solved with the stroke of the pen or the great seal being stamped onto the parchment of the Magna Carta.

This book looks more at the world of the English in 1215 rather than the document of the Magna Carta itself. In this respect, it parallels in some ways Danziger's earlier book. The authors look at life in castles, country homes of all classes, town dwellings and church institutions. The ways in which family, school, commerce and employment were dealt with are all subjects of concern here. This was still a feudal society, with overlapping hierarchies of church, crown and aristocracy, as well as contentious foreign relations (the kings of England and France still held rival claims over each other's kingdoms).

Danziger and Gillingham develop a world in which the politics of church and state are still vastly intertwined at the highest levels, but the world of the common folk remains little influenced by the great issues of state in a direct sense. On the other hand, there were popular ideas and sentiments that could make themselves felt from the ground up - the legend of Robin Hood is but one example of the ways in which people saw themselves as aspiring to a freedom more present in later constitutional development.

Each chapter of the book opens with a clause or statement taken from the Magna Carta, and thus the great document holds the organising principle for the text. It is somewhat ironic, as the authors discuss, that the main text of what we consider the Magna Carta (and the one that carried the force of law in Britain from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century) was in fact a revised edition drawn up in 1225. One gets the sense that this is a document that helps establish basic rights we take for granted, including freedom from capricious tyranny and the right to protest. 'Although there is not a word in it about the right to protest, there is a sense in which Magna Carta in its entirety represents protest.'

However, it is the Magna Carta's myth more than its substance that carries the main weight of its legacy. While the idea of the Magna Carta certainly shaped later legal and constitutional development throughout the English-speaking world, Danziger and Gillingham do a reasonably convincing job at showing that the document was in fact more a reflection of its world than a dramatic reformation of it.

This is a popular history text - it has some useful bibliographic information, but does not employ footnotes, endnotes, or other more academic devices in the text. The writing is accessible, informative and more than occasionally lively.

In this fascinating book, the authors look at England in 1215, and give the reader an wonderfully in-depth understanding of what life was like at that time, what was going on in England and the rest of Europe, and finally gives the story of Magna Carta, the myths that have grown up around it and even its wording.

Every once in a while a book comes along that surprises me with its excellence - well, this is one of those books! The authors do an excellent job of giving the reader a feel for life in the thirteenth century, really bringing it to life. I enjoyed every page of this fascinating history book, and highly recommend it to everyone who enjoys reading a good book!