There are three main problems for any historian trying to
tell the story of the Wars of the Roses. Firstly, where to start in the complex
set of social and political circumstances that led to the conflict. Secondly,
how to separate the web of myths, half-truths and legends from the historical
facts and thirdly there are the significantly differing historical accounts to
be reconciled. Alison Weir has produced
a very readable narrative that deals
comfortably with all these problems.
I
can’t remember the last time I read a book then immediately started all over
again at page one, this time more slowly, just in case I’d missed something. As well as covering the whole story from the
roots of the families of Lancaster and York (with two hundred pages of
background and ‘scene setting’ there are plenty of fascinating footnotes to
history. Somehow it had escaped my notice that Henry V’s effigy in Westminster
Abbey had its silver head stolen in the time of Henry VIII – and it was only
replaced in 1971! (See this clipping) Another thing I missed was
that Richard of York was the first and only one of the Plantagenets to actually
use the name. Even for non-historians,
this book is a real page turner that proves that, of course, truth really is stranger
than fiction.
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