The Rise and Fall of God's Templars

“They combined the warrior code of aristocratic knights with the poverty and religious devotion of monks. …In Jones’s bravura account, this tension between aristocratic killer and humble monk shadows the Templar story. Jones’s fast-paced history is laced with tales of blood and bravery, disaster and victory. . . . Drawing on Christian and Muslim sources, he carries the Templars through the crusades with clarity and verve. This is unabashed narrative history, fast-paced and full of incident.” – The Sunday Times (London)

"In this thrillingly lucid account, Dan Jones demystifies the Templars in a story spanning hundreds of years and countless rulers, knights and archbishops, a seemingly disproportionate number of whom ended up beheaded . . . Anyone who has read Jones’s earlier medieval chronicles will know what to expect here: fast-paced narrative history depicted with irresistible verve, bloody battle scenes and moments of laugh-out-loud wit. There are contemporary parallels, too, with the Templars eventually being laid low by the medieval equivalent of a kind of 'fake news': anti-Templar propaganda spread by the church. This is another triumphant tale from a historian who writes as addictively as any page-turning novelist." --The Guardian

"Dan Jones has created a gripping page-turner out of the dramatic history of the Templars, from their spiritual warrior beginnings until their tragic destruction by the French king and the pope. It is genuinely moving and a chilling contemporary warning about the abuse of power through persecution and lies." -- Philippa Gregory, author of The White Queen

“Gripping… Jones tells the story of the Templars with energy and verve, regalling readers with well-chosen details and anecdotes. The Templars became poster boys of the early middle ages, famed for their piety and their military prowess. It was an intoxicating combination... The author’s ambition, he says, is 'to write a book that will entertain as well as inform.' He has done precisely that.” – Peter Frankopan, The Telegraph 

"This is a fascinating story of fanaticism, set in a land still known for its brutality and strife. 'I have not strayed from my usual ambition, which is to write a book that will entertain as well as inform,' writes the author. In that he has succeeded. Jones is certainly an entertainer, but also a fine historian who knows how to render serious scholarship into accessible prose. Seldom does one find serious history that is so easy to read." -- The Times (London)

“A fresh, muscular and compelling history of the ultimate military-religious crusading order, combining sensible scholarship with narrative swagger, featuring a cast of exuberantly monstrous sword swingers spattering Christian and Islamic blood from Spain to Jerusalem.” -- Simon Sebag Montefiore author of Jerusalem: The Biography 

“The story of the Templars, the ultimate holy warriors, is an extraordinary saga of fanaticism, bravery, treachery and betrayal, and in Dan Jones they have a worthy chronicler. Templars is a wonderful book!” — Bernard Cornwell, author of The Last Kingdom

“Thank God this book is sane… Jones’s latest book is more than merely sane. He tells the engrossing story of an ascetic order of warrior knights chiefly dedicated, at least at first, to the defense of pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem… Templars is based on a wide-ranging and thorough research and relies overwhelmingly on primary sources… It reads like a morality tale.” – Robert Irwin, Literary Review

“Well-sourced history...

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Dan Jones