Helen Castor completes this compelling work to explore how the memory of Joan of Arc emerged and has been maintained. Unwittingly a victim of political opportunism, so that she energised the French military to enable Charles VII to be crowned at Reims but then she was, in effect, discarded to her fate at the hands of the Burgundians and the English. The same time, a saviour to the French monarchy and also It was into the midst of political weakness and approaching disaster that Joan of Arc became, at one and The intricacies of the French situation are carefully revealed, thereby exposing just how complex they were, with weakness in the structure of France and in relationships at the heart of the French monarchy. In the course of this Helen Castor also reveals that Joan was not the first woman with visions and ‘voices' to have approached the French monarchy in those late 14 th and early 15 th Century decades - Marie Robine and Jeanne-Marie de Maille had both proved that the French court had previously been influenced by women with seemingly mystical powers. She considers the political nature of France, with its physically divided loyalties which extended to the Kings of England and the emergent Dukes of Burgundy as well as the inept and weak French monarchy, and shows how this contributed to the weakness that enabled Joan of Arc to emerge and momentarily To explore the emergence and influence of Joan of Arc, she devotes the first portion of her book to an examination of late 14 th and early 15 th Century France.

With the meticulous scholarship that she revealed in She-Wolves, and in the same captivating manner, Helen Castor, presents us with a very compelling analysis. The full title of this work is Joan of Arc: A History and this guides the reader into an expectation that this is not just another biography of Joan of Arc. Joan of Arc, Helen Castor, Faber and Faber,

Joan of arc by helen castor