King John cover art

King John

Treachery, Tyranny and the Road to Magna Carta

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 Months Free

£5.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Get this deal
Offer ends on 15 July 2026 at 11:59 BST.
More purchase options

King John

By: Marc Morris
Narrated by: Ric Jerrom
Get this deal

£5.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £15.50

Buy Now for £15.50

The brilliantly compelling new biography of the treacherous and tyrannical King John, published to coincide with the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta.

Authoritative and dramatic, Marc Morris' King John offers a compelling portrait of an extraordinary king whose reign marked a momentous turning point in the history of Britain and Europe. King John is buried in Worcester Cathedral.

©2015 Marc Morris (P)2015 Audible, Ltd Europe Great Britain Historical Royalty England Funny Tudor Middle Ages
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
All stars
Most relevant

Would you try another book written by Marc Morris or narrated by Ric Jerrom?

Yes, but I'd read it myself rather than have an audio book

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

His voice was quite dull ... I'm sure he can't change his speaking voice, but I'd have liked the book to sound more exciting and less like a dull lecture.

If this book were a film would you go see it?

Yes!

Maybe read it rather than listen!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Excellent content and enjoyed the narration by Ric Jerrom. Would highly recommend this book Audible should however show the titles of each chapter so the listener knows what the content is prior to listening to recording.

Brilliant Book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Marc Morris is a very enjoyable writer and makes everything interesting with wry humour!

Interesting and enjoyable

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Popular fiction, stories and histories all paint King John as a very vindictive and malicious man, but how much of that reputation did he really deserve? I bought this book in the hopes of learning that most of his bad reputation was propaganda due to the loss of his continental lands that subsequent monarchs fought to retrieve. However, this facinating history shows that King John's legendary petulance and self-serving motivations were at the heart of his own down fall. This history is laid out in terms that a lay person can follow with ease and gives us ordinary folk glimpses of how difficult it can be for historians to get to the truth of actions and motivations of those living so long ago with only limited contemporaneous materials available, and those writen for their own purposes too! Although I didn't learn that King John wasn't really that bad, I would recommend this read to anyone wanting to learn more about the origins of Magna Carta.

Was King John really that bad?

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I knew so little about King John. This book was a real eye opener. I caught myself thinking him unlucky and a victim of circumstances, but he was a deeply unpleasant man. He commanded few loyalties from his kinsmen.

A revelation

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews