National Book Award Non Fiction Winner
The Lion and the Throne
by Catherine Drinker Bowen
Summary
A narrative biography of Sir Edward Coke, the combative seventeenth-century English jurist whose battles with James I and Charles I helped establish the supremacy of common law over royal prerogative. Bowen brings courtroom and Parliament to life with novelistic detail, tracing Coke's rivalry with Francis Bacon and his role in shaping the Petition of Right. She presents him as an indispensable, if quarrelsome, ancestor of Anglo-American constitutional liberty.
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Historical Context & Significance
Bowen was famous for her "narrative" approach to biography, often imagining scenes and dialogue based on strict historical evidence to make the legal history come alive.