Book Review – ‘Wars of the Roses: The People, Places and Battlefields of the Yorkists and Lancastrians’ by Paul Kendall

Thank you to Pen and Sword for gifting me a copy of this to review.

What I do like about Paul Kendall’s books is that his books seem to each have 100 sections, whether it’s people, places, or objects. There isn’t just an image plate section in the middle, but the images are dispersed throughout the book. It gives a lovely text/image balance that you don’t always get with history books. I love that balance.

This Wars of the Roses book, there is a heavy weight towards places rather than the people or objects. Naturally, the places also cover battlefields, as how can you not cover battlefields in the Wars of the Roses? However, I would have liked to see more about the women like Elizabeth Woodville or Anne Boleyn, or Jacquetta of Luxembourg, but they are glossed over to focus on the kings – Henry VI, Edward IV and Richard III largely, although Henry VII is covered at the end.

There is a great variation of places, some of which I didn’t know about at all before reading, and some nice comments on what is original from the time and what has changed, and how. A lot of the images seem to be Author’s Own, which suggests that Kendall hasn’t just read about the places he’s writing about, but has been there himself, so obviously thorough and well-researched, and Kendall has an engaging writing style. What can happen with the Wars of the Roses as that you can get so bogged down in the detail that some books on the subjects are incredibly dense and hard to get through, but Kendall makes it accessible.

A few errors throughout, probably just missed in the editing process, easy to do:

• Early in the book Edmund, brother of Edward IV, is described as Duke of Rutland rather than Earl of Rutland but seems to be correct in other places.
• Said that Richard III travelled from Whitehall Palace to Westminster before his coronation, but Whitehall Palace didn’t exist yet; it was York Place.
• Said that rumours circulated Richard III wanted to marry his niece Elizabeth Woodville, but his niece was Elizabeth of York. Elizabeth Woodville was his sister-in-law.
• Talks about the marriage of Edward IV and Elizabeth of York where it should be the marriage of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville.

But overall, a very enjoyable and accessible read; loved the balance of text and images which worked really well.