Should you be looking for a special Christmas present for a budding Ricardian, a great idea is Annette Carson’s Richard III:  A Small Guide to the Great Debate.

The book is valuable and useful introduction for those new to the subject.  Those with more background knowledge of the period and the issues concerning Richard III will find Annette’s logical and concise presentation of the known facts helpful and interesting.   Wherever you may be in your Ricardian journey, this book is greatly recommended.

Up to know it had only been available as a paperback from Annette directly, but now you can also get it for eBook readers.  It can be ordered either from Troubador Publishing Ltd or from Amazon.

A new guidebook is due to be launched today:  Richard III: The Leicester Connection by David Baldwin.  It should be a great help to anyone planning to visit Leicester.  According to the announcement it will bring “to life the city’s medieval past, King Richard III’s links to the city and the extraordinary story of how he came to be buried in the city following his death at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485.”

Appropriately the launch will take place at Leicester’s Travelodge, which is on the site of the Blue Boar Inn, where Richard stayed before heading to meet Henry Tudor’s army at Bosworth.  An information panel will tell the Blue Boar Inn.  The author, David Baldwin, will obviously be present, but the instigator of the Greyfriars Project, Philippa Langley is also expected.  The Mayor of Leicester, Peter Soulsby, will unveil a plaque at the Travelodge marking the site of the Blue Boar Inn.

If you are planning to visit the city, one of your first stops should be either at The Guildhall, New Walk Museum, Visit Leicester, Leicester Cathedral or the University of Leicester bookshop, where you can buy the book for £3.99.

For more information click here and here.

One of the most enjoyable pieces of Ricardian fiction, The Adventures of Alianore Audley by Brain Wainwright, is now available for Kindle.  As the print version of the book has for some time been quite difficult to get hold of, this is certainly great news.

Alianore is my favourite Ricardian heroine and I can only encourage you to make her acquaintance, too.  You won’t be disappointed!

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Sonya Hartnett was awarded this year’s Book of the Year: Younger Readers award for her novel The Children of the King at the Children’s Book Council of Australia Awards at the National Library of Australia yesterday.

The novel tells the story of three children sent to live in the English country side during World War II.  In an old castle nearby, they meet two strangely clothed boys, who cannot leave.  The protagonists’ uncle then tells them the story of a duke who became king – Richard III.

We congratulate Sonya Hartnett for her well-deserved award.  Richard and his life and times rule ok! And our reviewer Annaliese will be happy to know she enjoyed such a worthwhile book.

Annette Carson, Richard III:  A Small Guide to the Great Debate

As the title indicates this is a small book – only 96 pages – but it is about a big issue.   Annette Carson looks at the debate with her usual thoroughness, focussing on the two main issues:  did Richard III usurp the throne and the fate of the Princes in the Tower.   She analyses the evidence for and against and sets the historical context.   The reader is left to consider the evidence and make up their own minds about Richard’s innocence or guilt.

Whilst this book may not bring much new information to readers familiar with the period, it is a valuable and useful introduction for those new to the subject.  However, even experienced Ricardians will find her logical and concise presentation of the known facts helpful and interesting.  It is inevitable that in a short book there are no detailed references, however the key sources are mentioned and every now and then I found myself inspired to dig deeper.

A rewarding book for anyone interested in the ‘Great Debate’

More information and how to order is contained in this flyer:  Small Guide A4 leaflet (1)-1

Book Review:  Mistress to the Crown

Isolde Martyn, Mistress to the Crown.  Harlequin Mira, Chatswood, Australia, 2013. ISBN 9781743560211

It’s wonderful to see a new book from Isolde Martyn, and Mistress to the Crown more than lives up to the reputation of Martyn’s award-winning The Lady and the Unicorn and Knight and the Rose. The author’s knowledge and love of medieval history is evident as she deftly weaves fact and fiction together to flesh out the character of Edward IV’s mistress, the hitherto much maligned ‘Jane Shore’.

Jane’s plight (a young girl trapped in a loveless marriage to an older, impotent man) is sympathetically portrayed as is her motivation to change the odds stacked against her by becoming the mistress of a nobleman. She doesn’t just ‘sleep’ her way to success, however; feisty and independent, she forges her own destiny while at the same time keeping her door (and her heart) open to the poor, the needy and the misjudged who petition her for help – with a fitting reward for her kindness just when she most needs it. Historical details flesh out the scenes without intruding on these ‘affairs of the heart’ that make Jane such an appealing and memorable character.

Readers will enjoy this witty and page-turning glimpse into a past that is now so very much in the public eye with the unearthing of the remains of Edward IV’s brother, Richard III, from beneath the council carpark in Leicester.

Note:  This review has been previously published on Goodreads.  I meant every word, I think it’s important to those members who write books about this period that we get behind them and let people know about and enjoy their work.

Dr John Ashdown-Hill’s research was instrumental in finding Richard III’s remains and confirming that the skeleton was really his.  This lead earlier this year to a new edition of his book The Last Days of Richard III, originally published in 2010.  The title of the new edition The Last Days of Richard III and the Fate of His DNA: The Book That Inspired the Dig tells us where it has been updated.

In July he has a new book coming out – Royal Marriage Secrets.  It covers quite a wide time-scale – ending up with the little known case involving the present Queen’s grandfather.  But it contains quite a bit of Ricardian interest.  Edward IV Eleanor and Elizabeth, of course, but also when is a Tudor not a Tudor, and samples of medieval love spells and potions in case anyone should want to try them!  I have pre-ordered my copy and am waiting for it with eager anticipation.

Meanwhile John has been spending time underground in the burial vault of the Duke and Duchess of Clarence.  Are they still there?  How did George – and Isabel – really die?  Why did George turn out the way he did?  And what did he really look like?  He is trying to answer these and other questions in a new book called The Third Plantagenet.  According to the Book Depository it should be out on 3 March 2014.

The picture on the left shows John Ashdown-Hill’s suggestion for the cover design. (Picture supplied by John Ashdown Hill)

Literature Matters:  The White Queen

The White Queen by Philippa Gregory, World Book Night edition, 2013

I only read this book because my local library gave me a free copy on World Book Night – and by the time I’d finished, I was sincerely glad I hadn’t paid for it.

The underlying story is good (based on the incredible life of Elizabeth Woodville, Queen of Edward IV, it could hardly be anything else); and two pages of bibliographic references show that the author has done her homework. That she has drawn from some of the more lurid sources isn’t surprising – this is, after all, a romantic novel – thus we see Elizabeth waylaying Edward for their first meeting as a supplicant clutching the hands of her two little boys; and shortly after, the hackneyed ‘death before dishonour’ scene in which she grabs his dagger and threatens to cut her throat rather than be seduced. The heroine and her mother are both shown as practising witches, capable of whistling up storms, causing Richard of Gloucester to lose the use of his arm and, of course, ensnaring Edward; and throughout, Elizabeth harks back to her supposed descent from the French water-goddess Melusina. (The legend of Melusina and her ducal lover crops up periodically, in passages intended to echo Elizabeth and Edward’s relationship. I found these chokingly annoying, but luckily they appear in italics so can be easily spotted and skipped without detriment to the main narrative).

The bulk of the story is told in the first person, present tense, by Elizabeth Woodville. This gives The White Queen a certain freshness and immediacy, although the style is difficult to carry off plausibly in this genre, and I wasn’t overly impressed by Gregory’s attempt. The early chapters are riddled with references to Edward as a ‘boy’; and while he might have been five years Elizabeth’s junior, I can’t imagine her (or any 15th century lady) using the term for a man well into his majority – let alone for a proven warrior who had reigned as king for three years by the time the story starts. Much of the dialogue is clunky and full of over-explication; this may be necessary to communicate the background history to the reader, but it makes for some pretty unlikely conversations between characters of the time. And Gregory wins my personal award for ‘Most Excruciating Bit of Dialogue in Any Historical Novel’ with Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford’s remark to Cecily, Duchess of York, regarding the latter’s son George, Duke of Clarence: ‘…what would one call him?’ She pauses to wonder what one would call Cecily’s favourite son, then she finds the words: ‘An utter numpty.’ Unbelievable! Bad enough to employ such a grotesque anachronism; even worse to deliberately draw attention to it as though it’s clever and funny. (I guess Gregory thinks it is; she must be laughing all the way to the bank to have fans who pay good money to read such ghastly stuff).

To me, the best parts of The White Queen were the lively battle scenes (possibly because they’re not told in Elizabeth’s voice), the imaginative resolution of the ‘Princes in the Tower’ mystery and Elizabeth’s relationship with Richard III in the closing chapters. But altogether I found it an unsatisfying experience which left me baffled as to why this author is so popular – she’s certainly no Jean Plaidy or Antonia Fraser. Her graceless prose has nothing beautiful to wallow in, nothing substantial to get the teeth into; her sentences are short, her language so basic that (bar a modicum of sex and violence) she might be writing for children. Maybe that’s the appeal – it’s quick, simple, undemanding bland pulp. But if The White Queen is a fair representation of Gregory’s work, it’ll be the first and last of it I read – and I sure as hell won’t be watching the forthcoming TV adaptation!

Conclusion? Don’t waste your money. Buy David Baldwin’s non-fiction biography of Elizabeth Woodville instead; it beats this hands-down for readability and interest.

The above was first published on 16 May 2013 on Helen’s website ‘Helen Rae Rants!‘.  We thank her for permitting us to publish it here as well.

I just received the advance notice of Simon & Schuster’s June releases.  Almost top of the list is:

Sumerford’s Autumn, by Barbara Gaskell.

Described as:  “Four sons, and four very different personalities, children of the Sumerford Castle and estates, and their father the earl watches their varied interests with misgiving.”

Barbara is a valued member of our branch and we are very happy that her enjoyable books will finally be available in print format, making them accessible to a much wider audience than her self-published ebooks.

You can find Dorothea’s review here.

(Please note, the above was the cover design of the ebook,  The cover of the print book has not been published yet.)