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Anthony Steel’s 1941 monograph ‘Richard II’ is still worth reading but his useful analysis of Richard II’s reign has been overtaken, to the point that it is now ignored, by his portrayal of the king’s character. Steel was the first historian to assert that Richard II was psychologically damaged and that some of his actions derived from character weaknesses. This assessment was not a complete novelty - Stubbs had previously made comments as to Richard II’s character - and writers that followed amplified this idea until the present moment when Richard II is little short of a maniac and the spirit of English Progress is champing at the bit to come to the nation’s rescue in the form of Henry IV. Here is a word cloud of quotations from Steel’s book: neurosis … schizoid… depression … tortured memories… pathological suspicions… almost insane… the course of Richard’s mental disease was accelerated… probably neurotic … mumbling neurotic … acute melancholia. (Stubbs has ‘a change of character,….. the king’s excitement…. mental excitement or passion,…. like the cunning of a madman, a violent and reckless attempt…’ It should be noted that Stubbs is equivocal as to whether Richard II did suffer from the above.)) However, neither Steel nor Stubbs ascribed the events of 1397 to Richard II’s ‘personality defects’ despite their interest in them and later historians’ projection of Richard II as ‘Richard the Revenger’ is based wholly on Steel who, ironically, ascribed the king’s reaction in 1397 to political factors rather than originating in his personality, although he had analysed it in psychiatric terms. Why might Steel have thought that his amateur diagnosis of Richard II’s mental health ought to be woven into his monograph, which is otherwise erudite? A guess might be hazarded that Freudian/Jungian etc ideas were circulating in Cambridge whilst Steel was there c1918-c1949. It is interesting to note that mental disease was the specialism of his father, Major Edwin Bedford Steel, doctor in the RAMC, killed in action November 1914.