London in the Later Middle Ages: Government and People 1200-1500
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This is the first full account of the evolution of the government of London from the tempestuous...
Great British Journeys
Book
Intrepid presenter Nicholas Crane investigates eight epic journeys, following in the footsteps of...
Trading Story: Trading Interviews, Tips & Inspiration For Newer Traders
Podcast
Trading Story aims to bring NEWER traders practical & inspiring trading interviews and tips. Plus,...
Romanian New Wave Cinema: An Introduction
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Modern Romanian filmmaking has received wide international recognition. From 2001 to 2011, promising...
The Strange Laws of Old England
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Did you know that: It's against the law to check into a hotel in London under assumed names for the...
HUMANS - Season 2
TV Season Watch
Humans is a science fiction television series that debuted on 14 June 2015 on Channel 4. Written by...
English Furniture
Book
The story of English furniture really begins in the sixteenth century, when crude medieval tables...
The Mating Season (Jeeves, #9)
Book
A Jeeves and Wooster novel At Deverill Hall, an idyllic Tudor manor in the picture-perfect...
Deborah (162 KP) rated The Tudor Rose in Books
Dec 21, 2018
Overall the book follows a somewhat traditionalist stance, although Henry Tudor comes across as pretty cold and unlikeable. I wasn't convinced by some of the internal logic and some of the characterisation though. Anne Neville, for example. She is a figure we really don't know that much about, but it's hard to conceive she could be as simple and naive as she is portrayed here! Barnes does try it on a bit with trying to make us wonder if 'Perkin' is really Richard of York (and here the historical novelist has licence, because we really don't know!), despite having Bess keep adamantly stating that she knows her brothers are dead. We're also told that Elizabeth Woodville believes they died, which might lead one to question why she would have a finger in a rebellion against her daughter as queen consort? And if everybody really believed this, why did Sir William Stanley lose his head for saying he wouldn't fight against 'Perkin' if he was really a son of Edward IV - and that is in the historical record as well as this novel. There's an awful lot about Bess believing both Richard and Henry have potentially been culpable in acts of murder, but she herself in this novel is guilty of an act of treachery that is at least as bad!
Not a badly written novel, but I found it frustrating overall!
Deborah (162 KP) rated Fatal Colours in Books
Dec 21, 2018
First and foremost, the title of the book is a bit misleading. The Battle of Towton itself accounts for probably no more than a quarter of the text. I'm not saying the the rest of the book is bad, because it deals with the whole 'first half' of the Wars of the Roses and looks at how Henry VI's incapacity to rule (and the reasons for this) where in some degree responsible for the conflict, but it might be disappointing if you were expecting a full on coverage of Towton. You could try Andrew Boardman's book instead if you were interested in the battle.
My second disappointment was the introduction. Why would you ask Starkey, a well known Tudor historian, with a typical Tudor historian rabid anti-Yorkist views to write an introduction to a book ostensibly about one of the great Yorkist victories? This was one reason I held off buying this book for quite some time, not helped by the fact that the Kindle download sample was just part of this introduction, which wasn't helpful at all.
Goodwin delivered his own Coup de Grace in my eyes right at the end where he almost offhandedly accused Richard III of both the murder of his nephews (hotly debated, I admit, but without a shred of solid evidence) and then saying he 'probably' murdered Henry VI!!! Unless you take Shakespeare as gospel, there is absolutely no evidence at all for this and it's most unlikely. These couple of throwaway comments severely undermined Goodwin's credibility, which was a shame, as I felt that the book overall was good, but it makes me wonder if there was other sloppy research in there?