Award-winning historian John Guy throws new light on the relationship between Thomas Beckett and Henry II as he brings to life one of the biggest figures in British history. Guy shows how Beckett rose from an unremarkable middle-class background to become the most powerful man in the kingdom after the king and how he was then elevated to sainthood within a year of his bloody murder.

Guy suggests that Beckett and Henry were never great friends during the early stages of his career, contrary to the way history perceives them. He uncovered a list of books in Becket’s library while he was in exile, giving him an insight into his subject’s ambition and thinking at that time. Guy’s previous works include My Heart is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots, winner of the 2004 Whitbread Biography Award.