It would have been interesting to see this later period, and more about the rule of Edward IV, which is also lacking. It doesn’t look at the divisions within the House of York (except Warwick, as he is key in the final battles of the Lancastrian defeat), including Richard III and the Princes in the Tower. Alison WeirĬontents: This book focuses mainly on the point up until the Battle of Tewkesbury and the triumph of the House of York. What would probably have been more useful even than citations, particularly for a reader relatively new to the period, would have been a list of who was on the side of York and who was on the side of Lancaster. All there is is a general bibliography at the end, with a couple of family trees, which are useful as the period is a complicated one. Weir discusses the meagre amount of surviving sources, but then fails to build on that in the book itself.Ĭitations: There aren’t really any citations to speak of, which makes it difficult to track where certain information comes from.

Preface: The preface / introduction is quite short, but gives a quick overview of the main focal points of the Wars of the Roses, and explains where the idea came from to write about the Wars of the Roses when most of her books are written about the Tudors. It focuses on the role of Margaret of Anjou, and the conflicts between her and the Duke of York, which led to York triumphing over Lancaster. Title: The title is very apt, as the book covers mainly the first part of the Wars of the Roses – when Lancaster and York were at war, and not the latter part where the war was between York itself (Richard III and the Princes in the Tower or Edward IV vs. In The Lady in the Tower, Weir has constructed a gripping tale of betrayal and treason, wrought with her trademark forensic research and penchant for an enthralling narrative.Alison Weir, ‘Lancaster and York: the Wars of the Roses’ (London: Vintage Books, 2009) Paperback, ISBN 978-7-5 Alison Weir ‘Lancaster and York’ Mystery surrounds the circumstances leading up to her arrest - did Henry VIII instruct Thomas Cromwell to fabricate evidence to get rid of her so that he could marry Jane Seymour? Did Cromwell, for reasons of his own, construct a case against Anne and her faction, and then present compelling evidence before the King? Or was Anne, in fact, as guilty as charged? On 15 May, she was tried and found guilty of high treason and executed just four days later. On 2 May, 1536, in an act unprecedented in English history, Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife, was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Now, Alison Weir's richly researched and impressively detailed portrait gives us the compelling story of the last days of history's most charismatic, controversial and tragic heroines.

Never before has there been a book devoted entirely to Anne Boleyn's fall.

The lady in the tower alison weir