If you want to kill some time, go onto a used bookstore site like Alibris or Biblio and look for biographies of King Henry IV (reigned 1399-1413). Go ahead. I'll wait.

You'll have a lot of hunting to do, unless you know enough to search for a particular title. Your search will be incredibly polluted with editions of Shakespeare's Henry IV plays. I say "littered" because, of course, Shakespeare's relationship with genuine history was about like the average cat's relationship with a bath: He avoided it with every bit of skill he had. Which makes especially important to find a real history to let you overcome all the wrong notions found in Shakespeare's texts.

Unfortunately, the three kings of the Lancastrian dynasty have generally been under-served by biographers -- Henry VI, I think, because it's so hard to work on a king so wrong-headed and incomprehensible, Henry V because it's so hard to get behind his legend, and Henry IV because it's hard to get around the regicide to find the actual man. There were two Henry of Bolingbrokes, the one he was before Richard II drove him out of the country and the one he became after he deposed Richard II, and one wonders if they would even have recognised each other.

All that may explain why this is one of only two biographies of Henry IV that I have seen, the other being by Chris Given-Wilson. The latter is decades newer, substantially fuller, and much broader in scope. But it tends to wander rather far afield. This biography is much more focused, so it's easier to dig into and get the information you need and go out and do something with that information.

I don't think author Kirby was all that fond of his subject, at least after Henry came to the throne; he doesn't think Henry was quite up to the challenge of being a medieval king. Not many were, which is why in the space of less than two centuries, the English deposed Edward II, Richard II, Henry VI (twice!), Edward IV, Edward V, and Richard III (and brought back Henry VI and Edward IV once each). Certainly Henry IV faced a lot of rebellions, mostly because he didn't have enough money to pay off his nobles. But Henry was, ultimately, a man in a frying pan not of his own heating, and when he went from it into the fire, he at least managed to survive there. That's both Kirby's conclusion and mine.

This book is half a century old now, and a lot has been discovered since that time, but I don't think it adds much to the greater picture. Old as it is, I think this would still be my suggestion for a first book to read about Henry. ( )