The most extraordinary thing about Henry V was that he was alive at all. When he was sixteen, fighting with his father against a rebel nobleman, he was hit in the face by an arrow that entered below his eye and lodged in the back of the neck – without touching his brain. Usually this would have led to death from infection and most physicians would simply have pulled the arrow out through the face, tearing the flesh inside. An initial team of doctors – later described as ‘lewd chattering leeches’ – bungled this, breaking off the arrow. But the royal doctor, John Bradmore, a brilliant man, was
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