Had Edward I been a cricketer, argues David Mitchell, he would have played spin badly: “A smasher of the ball, not one for glancing or nurdling, or using his pad. Any edge he got on a delivery would have flown straight into the slips.” As sporting analogies go, this is apposite for the 13th-century king who would eventually gain the nickname “Hammer of the Scots”.

Edward’s penchant for forceful solutions extended into the administrative arena where, Mitchell suggests, he waged a “war on nuance”. The same could be said of Mitchell’s portrayal of a sovereign whose reform of English law and currency mark him out as one of our nation’s most complex and important.…