This readable survey offers a broadly comprehensive introduction to Philip and his reign. Bradbury surveys the key facts of Philip's personal life, the governmental reforms undertaken during his rule, and the most important political and military events of the reign such as the Battle of Bouvines. There's no original archival research in here, but Bradbury's contribution to the topic is to re-read the Anglo-Norman chronicles with an eye to their bias against Philip. Bradbury's contention is that Philip was a better ruler, and a more admirable man, than most Anglophone scholarship has portrayed him (given the bias of many British historians in favour of Richard I of England). I'll grant the evidence of anti-Capetian bias in those chronicles, though I don't know that I would be as thoroughly favourable in my estimation of the man as Bradbury is. ( )