The Wars of the Roses

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Blood Red Roses - Rated
A superb narrative history as gripping as any thriller you can find on this website, beautifully paced and compelling to read. As an interested novice to the Wars of the Roses I found the device of following five characters of the period a useful, humanising touch which leavened out the sheer brutality of some of the tales and drew the tale of this time away from a mere recounting of the deeds of kings. That said, this book is not perhaps aimed at those who have already made a study of the period and may infuriate those with more fixed opinions on this subject.

I personally did not detect any great bias in favor of one feuding House over the other, rather more a sometimes over-familiarity with and innate generosity towards his chosen five, notably Hastings. To even attempt to bring alive the aspirations and fears of people some five hundred years dead would always be tricky, particularly given the sometimes light historical evidence available. Seward pulls it off by placing the people in the context of what was acceptable in their times and never stretching his notions beyond breaking. Finally, this is the tale of how the Medieval age became the Tudor age, the bloodiness and desperation of what went before moulding the politics and culture to come. As such it is well worth a read, if only because of the way a sense of this time is conveyed.

Hugely enjoyable but not for the literally minded.

Interesting Idea but somewhat disappointing - Rated
I thought that this sounded like an interesting and new take on the Wars of the Roses and I must confess to being a little disappointed. Seward has chosen 5 historical characters to see the conflict through, but it didn't seem as if there was enough on each of these to make it really work.

One thing I found particularly peculiar was the authors habit of refering to William, Lord Hastings as William through most of the book, rather than the usual 'Hastings'. Despite knowing her real name to have been Elizabeth Shore, he insists on refering to her as 'Jane' Shore, because 'that is how she is known to history', and we seem to have rather more of her fathers story than of hers, even when she was one of the 5 chosen principle characters!

I also felt that the book was a little unbalanced in terms of bias. It was quite apparant to me that the author favoured the Lancastrians and had nothing but praise for Margaret Beaufort, John Morton and the Earl of Oxford.

This is also a book which really does require some knowledge of the events of the Wars of the Roses already, as it does not go into these in so much depth.

In short an interesting idea for a new take, but it did not work as well as I would have hoped and I was left feeling a little disappointed.