With All For All: the Life of Simon de Monfort, Darren Baker, Amberley, 2015, 320p, £20-00. ISBN 978-1-4456-4574-2.

This book provided an unusual perspective on the life and achievements of Simon de Montfort and the anniversary of his death at the Battle of Evesham seven hundred and fifty years ago. It is unusual because it is written by an American historian based in the Czech Republic. It is his enthusiasm which creates the unusual perspective: he is, in effect, an outsider examining and looking in on an understated anniversary.

Darren Baker’s enthusiasm may be a product of his American upbringing and education but will also be a by-product of his chosen domicile in the Czech Republic. The former creates a mind-set which celebrates the democratic inheritance which the emigrant settlers transferred into America. They were acutely aware that, however slow the progress, the emergent democratic and progressive solution to government was a tradition rooted in the monarch-in-parliament governmental system first observed in Henry III’s reign, and much influenced by de Montfort. Equally he is resident in the land of the ‘Velvet Revolution’ where democratic change has been met with great enthusiasm.