This book is about the historical moment when writers and critics first used the term "realism" to describe representation in literature and painting.

This book charts the striking rise, fall and restoration of the first earl of Ulster, Hugh II de Lacy, described by one contemporary chronicler as 'the most powerful of the English in Ireland'. A younger son of the lord of Meath, de Lacy ascended from relatively humble beginnings to join the top stratum of Angevin society, being granted in 1205 the first earldom in Ireland by King John. Subsequently, in 1210, having been implicated in rebellion, Hugh was expelled from Ulster by a royal army and joined the Albigensian crusade against Cathar heretics in southern France. Unusually, after almost...