 mail message to the author, August 5, 1999.
Dr. Phillips, who is the Admissions Tutor of the Department of History and Economic History of the Manchester Metropolitan University, possesses special expertise in the field of medieval warfare. ln the course of our electronic mail conversation about military practices during Joan’s era, Dr. Phillips reminded me that during an era when many high-ranking military men held deep religious beliefs, such men would have been predisposed to accept Joan as at least the spiritual leader of the army.
Sackville-West, V. Saint Joan of Arc. Revised edition. London: Michael Joseph LTD, 1948.
Though seriously dated, this book remains the standard and most thorough general biography of Joan available in English. As such, all the standard scenes and anecdotes of Joan’s life that have entered the common currency are presented in this book in their greatest detail. Still, her rendition of these famous stories is based on the same trial transcripts and old chronicles that are so ably excerpted and presented by Pemoud. Sackville-West provides a depth of detail about Joan’s family that other works lack and the day by day chronology of Joan’s career that she provides at the end of her book is a Godsend. Yet, I still have strenuous disagreements with Sackville-West’s analysis of some of Joan’s battlefield moves. For example, she opines that Joan’s refusal to attack the fully deployed English field army on the last day at Orléans was based solely on the fact that it was Sunday and that this decision was a mistake. I agree with Lucie-Smith (see previous page) that Joan and Dunois were at least partly motivated by a desire to not attack an English army that was clearly ready for them and that was set up in the Englishmen’s favorite formation with which they had defeated the French so many times before.
Scott, W. S. Jeanne d’Arc. London: Harrap, 1974.
This book is an academically respectable but highly compressed narrative of Joan’s life. Its main value to me was to confirm me ln my opinion that Joan’s answers at her trial form the best proof we have of her natural genius.
Williams, Jay. Joan of Arc. New York: American Heritage/Harper and Row, 1963. While lavishly illustrated, this work is essentially a derivative popular biography.