Drawing on more than 40 years of research and combining narrative with analysis, R. J. Knecht describes the rise and fall of France in the sixteenth century clearly and authoritatively.

R. J. Knecht is Emeritus Professor of French History and a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Research in the Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Birmingham. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a member of the Société de l'Histoire de France, he has been Chairman of the Society for Renaissance Studies and of the Society for the Study of French History. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance at the University of Warwick. He has published extensively in the field of French history, and his Renaissance Warrior and Patron: The Reign of Francis I (1994) recently appeared in a revised French edition under the title, Un prince de la Renaissance: François Ier et son royaume (1998).