A war by any other name

August 1, 2011 8:44 PM

If I was to read one book about the Wars of the Roses, what book should it be?
posted by shothotbot to Media & Arts (7 answers total)

Best answer: Helen Castor's Blood and Roses is a history of the Paston family set against the backdrop of the Wars of the Roses.
posted by verstegan at 9:43 PM on August 1, 2011

Best answer: If you are reading just one, I would recommend Lander's War of the Roses. Goodman's books on the Soldiers' Experience and Military Activity and English Society are also worthwhile.
posted by TheRaven at 11:12 PM on August 1, 2011 [3 favorites]

Best answer: You haven't said what you want to get out of the book, but the average non-historian might learn everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-the-War-of-the-Roses while enjoying Sharon Kay Penman's heavily-researched The Sunne in Splendour: A Novel of Richard III. For a more scholarly approach, I recall liking Paul Murray Kendall's Richard the Third (1956), but it certainly does not reflect the most recent scholarship. You'd have to decide if it's too dated for your needs.
posted by Dave 9 at 6:28 AM on August 2, 2011

I'd want to know what you were looking for in the book and how hardcore you like your history before answering. I liked Blood and Roses all right, and I loved The Sunne in Splendour when I read it as a teenager, but wouldn't recommend it as the only thing you read.
posted by immlass at 7:22 AM on August 2, 2011

I'm someone you don't want to know: I was a serious history buff through my 20s and 30s, a snob even! But some of the things I really like now are dramatisations of this period... most history fiction novellists have the high-lights correct, they just ascribe motivations where we actually lack primary evidence.

But you know what? Many of them do it from a perspective of really understanding the period.

so I'm going to go out on an unpopular limb here (WHOOT? The WILDER!)
and say, try to get into the Phillipa Gregory series around this period, particularly The Red Queen and The White Queen. I think it may serve.
posted by Wilder at 11:38 AM on August 2, 2011

Response by poster: I'd want to know what you were looking for in the book and how hardcore you like your history before answering

I embrace all the cores of history - hardcore, laden with footnotes like a viking ship riding low in the water with captured loot or softcore historical fiction with the odd steamy bedroom diversion and invented quotes around the conference table before a battle.

I like it accurate but mainly well written.
posted by shothotbot at 2:49 PM on August 2, 2011

Nthing Sunne in Splendour. The Phillipa Gregorys are good, but Sunne provided a more complete picture imo.
posted by johnvaljohn at 6:39 PM on August 2, 2011