Blood and Roses

Description

The War of the Roses turned England upside down. Between 1455 and 1485 four kings lost their thrones, more than forty noblemen lost their lives on the battlefield or their heads on the block, and thousands of the men who followed them met violent deaths. Yet almost nothing is known about the thoughts and feelings of the people who lived through this bloody conflict. Almost nothing, but not quite. As they made their way in a disintegrating world, a Norfolk family called the Pastons were writing letters - about politics, about business, about shopping, about love and about each other. Using these letters, the oldest surviving family correspondence in English, Helen Castor traces the extraordinary history of the Paston family across three generations. Blood & Roses tells the dramatic, moving and intensely human story of how one family survived one of the most tempestuous periods in English history.

Helen Castor is a Fellow in History at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. She has spent over ten years working on the Paston letters. Born in 1968, she grew up in Warwickshire, and now lives in London with her husband and son.

"'Sharply written, impeccably documented, structured with the trip and pace of a good thriller' Hilary Spurling Daily Telegraph"