The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March. Cet article n’est pas disponible.The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March

One night in August 1323 a captive rebel baron, Sir Roger Mortimer, drugged his guards and escaped from the Tower of London. With the king's men-at-arms in pursuit he fled to the south coast, and sailed to France. There he was joined by Isabella, the Queen of England, who threw herself into his arms. A year later, as lovers, they returned with an invading army: King Edward II's forces crumbled before them, and Mortimer took power. He removed Edward II in the first deposition of a monarch in British history. Then the ex-king was apparently murdered, some said with a red-hot poker, in Berkeley Castle. Brutal, intelligent, passionate, profligate, imaginative and violent: Sir Roger Mortimer was an extraordinary character. It is not surprising that the queen lost her heart to him. Nor is it surprising that his contemporaries were terrified of him. But until now no one has appreciated the full evil genius of the man. This first biography reveals not only the man's career as a feudal lord, a governor of Ireland, a rebel leader and a dictator of England but also the truth of what happened that night in Berkeley Castle.

Ian Mortimer graduated with a degree in History from the University of Exeter in 1989, then qualified as an archivist at UCL and worked in the Devon Record Office and the Public Record Office before taking up a post in the Department of History at Reading University. In 1994 he moved to the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts. In1999 he moved back to the University of Exeter, where he has been employed since, in a dual capacity as lecturer in primary sources for British history and as an archivist. He has lectured on a very wide range of historical themes, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1998.