Richard III: England's Black Legend (2013)

Understandably, the usurping Tudor dynasty blackened the last Plantagenet’s reputation, and some historians claim that Richard’s ‘black legend’ is nothing more than political propaganda. Yet such an interpretation, as Desmond Seward shows in this powerfully argued book, suggests a refusal to face facts. Even in the king’s lifetime there were rumours about his involvement in the murders of Henry VI and of his nephews, the ‘Princes in the Tower’, while his reign was ‘a nightmare, not least for the king himself’. The real Richard was both chilling and compelling, ‘a peculiarly grim young English precursor of Machiavelli’s Prince’. Sweeping aside sentimental fantasy, this is a biography that offers a definitive picture of both the age and the man.