John Ashdown-Hill

More 2.5 stars than 2 - I wanted to like this more than I did but found it quite hard work in places. The author has made a valiant job in attempting to reconstruct a medieval woman's life from the primary sources without getting swamped by her prominent male kinfolk, and he draws on a wider range of disciplines than documentary history to do so. There were, however, too many notes that jarred - for example, a weird section on being a middle aged woman that could have done with an edit by a middle aged woman, and a hyper-partisan approach to Cecily's familial relationships that requires some contortions to maintain (including accusing Elizabeth Woodville of committing murder without a shred of proof). This may be a more engaging read to those of a strongly pro-Yorkist, anti-Woodville bent.… (mer)

I did not like this book at all and it took everything in me to finish it. If it was any longer I would have quit. I was hoping for a book that provided more insight to George, Duke of Clarence, then what I know of him from historical fiction books and guess what - I really didn't. There truly wasn't anything new other then maybe his height which the author spends alot of time on. Additionally, it was very annoying to see the author use the name "Tudor" in quotes all the time - what was up with that. I am not a fan of this author and will not read another book of his again. Not worth the time.… (mer)

This is a strongly Ricardian (as in Richard III) life of Richard's middle brother, George duke of Clarence. Some of it is reasonably solid --it does have the merit of printing in full a number of important documents relating to the charges and counter-charges by Clarence, his followers ands his enemies, which ultimately ended in his execution, quite possibly being drowned in a cask of malmsey wine as the popular story has it. (there are in fact several near-contemporary reports of this story.) On the other hand, the author chooses to believe just about every scandal as long as it serves Ricardian ends --that the duke of Somerrset not only fathered the Lancastrian prince Edward (supposed son of Henry VI) on Queen Margaret but also that the same duke fathered the supposed Tudors Edmund and Jasper on the former Queen Catherine, and that Edward IV was not merely betrothed but well and truly married to Eleanor Butler before he married Elizabeth Woodville. He does have one good point --that one of the men executed for circulating propaganda for George (against Edward and his son by Elizabeth Woodville) had previously been associated with Eleanor Butler's family and might have picked up the story, but omits the fact that Eleanor was dead before the boys (though not their elder sister who later married Henry VII) were born.

He also has an odd obsession with proving that George was shorter than his brothers, not only Edward IV who was around 6 feet) but even Richard III (who was something like 5'8" and, as we now know from his bones, bent by scoliosis). He bases this almost entirely on a remark by a Burgundian official who saw George and Richard as children and said Richard was 8 and George was 9, when in fact George was 11. Ashdown-Hill assumes this meant that George was small for his age, though the Burgundian says nothing about the actual size of the boys, and may have just been assuming a normal difference thinking they had been born in immediate succession. Ashdown_Hll also repeatedly says there is no contemporary evidence for the claim that George looked tall and (relatively) fair like Edward instead of shorter and darker like Richard, but there is in fact a statement (of which he actually quotes the part about Richard) that Richard (or his supporters) allegedly said he was the true son of Richard duke of York because he and the duke were both small and dark, while Edward and George were not. Since the story had to discredit both Edward and George in order to establish Richard's claim , it must have been based on the observable fact that Richard's elder brothers looked alike.… (mer)