The myth became more important than the man - just as well, for those who like their past to be comforting or inspiring. With a bit of help from deluded historians and mythopoeic film-makers, Shakespeare turned Henry into a box-office hero and a romantic lead. Elizabethan dramatists boosted the image. Henry V, in English myth, is the ideal Englishman: plucky and persevering, austere and audacious, cool-headed, stiff-lipped and effortlessly superior: 'simply the greatest man,' as my generation of undergraduates learned, 'ever to rule England'.
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