On Boxing Day, 1170, Henry II was in Bayeux, worrying about his trouble­some Archbishop and famously appealing for someone to rid him of “this turbulent priest”. Four knights galloped to the coast, found a boat to take them over the wintry Channel, then thundered on to Canterbury. Within three days, they had murdered Thomas Becket. Henry was appalled, and vowed to make amends by going on crusade. He never made it himself but, in the spring of 1191, his son Richard kept his father’s promise. The money raised to support this Third Crusade was known as “the Saladin tax”, for Saladin was renowned as the symbol of Muslim power in the Holy Land. This unusual and fascinating book explains how a Syrian Kurd, born in 1137 in Tikrit, became a kind of Middle Eastern