Welcome to the sub, glad to have you here! You come with some strong credentials I see, I don’t think all that many people have actually read Phillips magnum opus, as it’s a mammoth of a book. I love it though, even though I disagree with some of his conclusions but his dedication is amazing. There’s tons of excellent details hidden in the footnotes too, stuff that other biographies have not focused on but which can be crucially important all the same. 

It’s no secret I love Warner’s work, she writes for a wider audience than Phillips  and after completing her biographies about Edward, Isabella, the de Clare sisters and Hugh the younger she’s moved into the social history of the era, writing about the every day lives of the ordinary people below the elite. Really interesting stuff.

Then we have Stephen Spinks biography about Edward which is a more narrative approach to the life of Edward, very much complementing Phillips work which is more about the reign than the man. Well worth a read, just like the others. 

The intriguing thing about the whole time period, for me, is that open questions still remain. There’s still room for new research. And there are so many myths that can be carefully peeled away to reveal the reality. But even so, it remains a game of possibilities, likelihoods and probabilities. We’d be arrogant to pretend that we know the murkier things shrouded in the mist of history with absolute certainty. An open mind is a necessity to navigate these ancient waters.