The gripping new history by the author of the acclaimed bestseller Winter King
It is 1461 and England is crippled by civil war. One freezing morning, a teenage boy wins a battle in the Welsh marches, and claims the crown. He is Edward IV, first king of the usurping house of York...
Thomas Penn's remarkable new telling of the wars of the roses takes us inside a conflict which fractured the nation for more than three decades. During this time, the house of York came to dominate England, wresting power from the house of Lancaster. At its heart were three charismatic brothers - Edward IV; George, Duke of Clarence; and Richard, Duke of Gloucester - who became the figureheads of a spectacular ruling dynasty and promised a renewal of royal authority.
But with Edward IV's ascendancy the wars turned inward, unleashing a catastrophic chain of rebellion, vendetta, fratricide, usurpation and regicide. The brothers who, together, looked invincible, were drawn into conflict with each other. The brutal end came at Bosworth Field in 1485, with the death of the youngest, then Richard III, at the hands of a new usurper, Henry Tudor.
The story of a warring family unable to sustain its influence and power, The Brothers York brings to life a dynasty that could have been as magnificent as the Tudors went on to become. Its tragedy was that, in the space of one generation, it destroyed itself.
Thomas Penn's bestselling Winter King was a Book of the Year in the Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Sunday Times and BBC History, and was awarded the H. W. Fisher Best First Biography Prize. He has a PhD in late fifteenth and early sixteenth century history from Clare College, Cambridge, and writes for, among others, the Guardian and the London Review of Books.
Show more
The gripping new history by the author of the acclaimed bestseller Winter King
It is 1461 and England is crippled by civil war. One freezing morning, a teenage boy wins a battle in the Welsh marches, and claims the crown. He is Edward IV, first king of the usurping house of York...
Thomas Penn's remarkable new telling of the wars of the roses takes us inside a conflict which fractured the nation for more than three decades. During this time, the house of York came to dominate England, wresting power from the house of Lancaster. At its heart were three charismatic brothers - Edward IV; George, Duke of Clarence; and Richard, Duke of Gloucester - who became the figureheads of a spectacular ruling dynasty and promised a renewal of royal authority.
But with Edward IV's ascendancy the wars turned inward, unleashing a catastrophic chain of rebellion, vendetta, fratricide, usurpation and regicide. The brothers who, together, looked invincible, were drawn into conflict with each other. The brutal end came at Bosworth Field in 1485, with the death of the youngest, then Richard III, at the hands of a new usurper, Henry Tudor.
The story of a warring family unable to sustain its influence and power, The Brothers York brings to life a dynasty that could have been as magnificent as the Tudors went on to become. Its tragedy was that, in the space of one generation, it destroyed itself.
Thomas Penn's bestselling Winter King was a Book of the Year in the Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Sunday Times and BBC History, and was awarded the H. W. Fisher Best First Biography Prize. He has a PhD in late fifteenth and early sixteenth century history from Clare College, Cambridge, and writes for, among others, the Guardian and the London Review of Books.
Show moreThe gripping new history of a dynasty that seized the English throne - then tore itself apart.
Thomas Penn's bestselling Winter King was a Book of the Year in the Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Sunday Times and BBC History, and was awarded the H. W. Fisher Best First Biography Prize. He has a PhD in late fifteenth and early sixteenth century history from Clare College, Cambridge, and writes for, among others, the Guardian and the London Review of Books.
A gripping, complex and sensational story, told with calm narrative
command. It's a story we think we know - but most accounts leave
the personnel as frozen as portraits in stained glass. Here, the
three York brothers spring to ferocious life, and you need strong
nerves to meet them. With insight and skill, Penn cuts through the
thickets of history to find the heart of these heartless
decades.
*Hilary Mantel*
The Brothers York is not just a magisterial work of sublime
scholarship, it's a pure page-turner. I couldn't put it down. The
wonderful thing about Thomas Penn is that he makes some of the most
familiar stories in English history feel fresh and exciting.
*Amanda Foreman*
An immense, sinewy political thriller. Thomas Penn has the enviable
skill of presenting hard research with a light touch. The Brothers
York is savage, exciting, blisteringly good.
*Jessie Childs, author of God's Traitors*
An epic orgy of colour and character: there are soldiers and
townsmen, poets and pirates, battlefield massacres and hidden
murders ... One of the great strengths of Brothers York is the
attention paid to the European stage.
*The Times*
A rip-roaring account ... Pacy, engrossing and evocative in its
details (of feasts and jousts as well as battles and diplomatic
skulduggery), it engages the reader's emotions as well as
intellect.
*Times Literary Supplement*
Superb. The tragedy and brutality of the Wars of the Roses jumps
out from every page of Penn's book ... An impressive and engaging
read.
*Financial Times*
Thrilling, pacy ... Brings a novelist's verve to his telling of
events ... Penn's history of betrayal, backstabbing and paranoia
strikes notes that still resonate today.
*The Guardian*
Fresh and lively narrative swagger ... Peppered with delightful,
telling anecdotes and details. Some are comical and others grisly,
but all breathe life into their subject ... Perhaps the greatest
strength of Penn's entertaining book is his understanding of the
warping effects of European affairs on English domestic
stability.
*The Sunday Times*
Epic, racy, breaks new ground ... Penn combines a keen sense of
time, place, circumstance and anecdote with a firm grasp of human
psychology, of the macabre, the comic and the tragic, and - perhaps
as important as any of these - an instinct for the rhythm of a
sentence.
*London Review of Books*
An exceptionally detailed and absorbing narrative history with a
gallantly sustained human touch ... Penn's Yorkist England is an
excellent place to take an exciting, and instructive, holiday from
2019.
*The Telegraph*
Gripping, richly contextualised and meticulously researched ... a
vital corrective to the ongoing, polarising battle over Richard
III's legacy.
*The Spectator*
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