Shining light on a dimly lit world

Edward IV was a conflicted man. He was a prodigious boozer and wencher, and a voracious reader and thinker. The bon vivant founded the English Royal Library: an assortment of illuminated books from England and continental Europe, some of which were bound before the Norman Conquest. It was a treasury of 100s of years of English and European history. The library grew throughout the Tudor and Stuart periods, before George II bequeathed it to the nation in 1757. The collection is now held in the British Library in London, where Royal Illuminated Manuscripts: from King Athelstan to Henry VIII opened this morning.

It is a captivating visual show that provides glimpses of medieval kings at work and at play. There are instructive books to aid the king in the public sphere, such as the guide to kingship presented to the child king Edward III. The text and the illustrations are very much of their time, particularly in their patronising attitude to women at court.