For Sale First Edition

For Sale

For Sale

The Wars of the Roses have traditionally been seen as the last dying convulsion of the Middle Ages, a marker between the medieval and the modern, and above all as a period of violence, horror and civil disorder. John Gillingham's new book shows that this is a spurious view of the period. His authoritative analysis of fifteenth-century warfare proves that the actual battles of the wars involved far fewer men than has been assumed, and that, apart from the Northumbria and the Scottish border, England was a society organized for peace.

Very-nice copy of this interisting book about Richard the Lionheart - red boards with gold lettering - NO writing, marks or tears inside book - Bright pages - Tight spine - 318 pages - Illustrated

A dazzling account of peace and conflict in 15th Century England which emphasises the military over the political history of the Wars of the Roses. Frequently remembered as a period of military history which both saw the French beat the English and then the English fight amongst themselves, traditional military historians have tended to pass over the period hastily, regarding it as an episode that wrecked England's military greatness. John Gillingham's highly readable history separates the myth from the reality. He argues that, paradoxically, the Wars of the Roses demonstrate how peaceful England in fact was. From the accession of the infant Henry VI to the thrones of England and France in 1422 to the accession of Henry VII following the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, Gillingham uses his gift for graphic description (particularly with his exciting account of the 1471 campaign) to great effect. He is also good at placing the warfare within its European context, especially in showing the problems encountered in conducting a civil war within a normally peaceful country.

First published as part of the best-selling The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, John Gillingham and Ralph A. Griffiths' Very Short Introduction to Medieval Britain covers the establishment of the Anglo-Norman monarchy in the early Middle Ages, through to England's failure to dominate the British Isles and France in the later Middle Ages. Out of the turbulence came stronger senses of identity in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland.Yet this was an age, too, of growing definition of Englishness and of a distinctive English cultural tradition.