Michael K. Jones (1)

I received this as an Advance Reader Copy from NetGalley.

I was the odd 12-year-old with an obsession for Richard III. I read Josephine Tey's famous book The Daughter of Time and was utterly convinced that Richard had been thoroughly maligned by Tudor propagandists and did not murder the princes in the Tower. I have read more about Richard and the War of the Roses over the years. Therefore, the recent news of the discovery of bones and their identification as Richard III was of keen interest show more to me.

Philippa Langley was the woman behind the search for Richard III. She was working on a screenplay and wanted a full idea of the "real" Richard. She spear-headed the effort, gathered the funding, and the result was extraordinary. Not only did they find Richard III, but he was found the very first day they began the dig.

Langley comes from a staunchly Ricardian background, She's a member of the Richard III Society and believes the king did not have the princes murdered, nor was he the warped villain as portrayed by Shakespeare. The co-author, Michael Jones, wants a more complete picture of Richard but he does believe that Richard murdered the princes, though this act must be viewed in context of the times. Together, I felt they provided an interesting balance to the book. They bring up oft-quoted passages by Sir Thomas More, but also explored a few other contemporary sources I had never read before. They go into great detail about Richard's character--even having a psychological profile done--talking about his piety, how he likely witnessed his mother's rape when he was a child and had firm views on sexual morality as an adult, how he was chivalrous and tried to act in a just way, even with the bodies of his enemies. This is a noteworthy aspect, considering how he was treated at the end: scalped and stabbed in the head, stripped and flung over a horse, stabbed in the buttocks, then crammed into a grave he didn't fit in. Then, after the dissolution of the church centuries ago, he is found today beneath a parking lot.

The chapters flow back and forth from a detail history of Richard, to place him in the context of his times, and about Langley's modern quest to find him. If a reader is unfamiliar with the War of the Roses, this likely is not a good book to start on the subject. It crams in a lot of material and there are many names to keep track of, many of them the same name (especially Edward). I found it all fascinating, but then, I have read on the era before. It was intriguing to learn about the modern science involved in his identification. I thought the psychological profile was a bit silly, but otherwise the authors placed good emphasis on viewing Richard in the context of his times.

Since I read an ARC ebook, I'm not sure if I missed out on illustrations or maps that are in the full version. I really would have liked more photographs and data along those lines. I'm in America and I'm not sure if or when I'll be able to see the full TV special by Langley, "Looking for Richard," though I certainly hope to at some point. show less

When you pick up this book, you're essentially getting the most positive "spin" you can get on the life of Edward of Windsor, better known as the "Black Prince," with the particular emphasis being on how the man took the precepts of Chivalry seriously, and how that influenced his conduct. The practice of Chivalry, in theory and practice is a big part of this work. This becomes significant as Jones debunks some of the more brutal acts associated with the man, and makes a good argument that, show more specifically, the massacre at Limoges, the last significant military event in the Prince's life was mostly negative propaganda. Also important is the Prince's relationship with his father, Edward III, particularly as the king's judgment became more dubious, and the Prince found himself being compelled to go on military adventures that compromised his policy as Prince of Aquitaine. All in all, this was a good study, that works equally well as social and political history before you tackle more academic works. show less

Although "Bosworth 1485" is a 2015 edition of an original 2002 book, its new introduction only very briefly acknowledges the find of Richard III of England's bones underneath a Leicester car park in September 2012 and any new information that resulted from that.

For more on that, it looks like The King's Grave: The Discovery of Richard III’s Lost Burial Place and the Clues It Holds also by author Michael K. Jones is the one to investigate.

Otherwise, "Bosworth 1485" is a terrific history of show more the background and events of Richard's brief 1483-1485 reign and Henry Tudor's revolt and the final battle of Bosworth. It provides some of the case against the Tudor propaganda of Shakespeare's Richard III while still acknowledging that Richard III is the main suspect in the deaths of his nephews (aka "The Princes in the Tower").

My favourite Richard III book is still the historical fiction The Daughter of Time (1952) by Josephine Tey which is one of the greatest cold case mystery books ever. show less

I have to admit that sometimes I ask myself, 'How much of the Second World War continues to remain mired in myths and legends?' Each time I get tired of reading monographs on this time period I find a volume that reinvigorates my interest. Michael Jones has managed to do this with every book he has put out on the war. I can confidently say that I, someone who has been reading on this period for over a decade, continue to be amazed by the information he manages to convey and unearth. While show more not everything that's found among these pages is original research, the narrative Jones has crafted is compelling and once more shows that even if some believe this time period has become over-saturated (every now and then I find myself among those 'some'), there are still areas that need more focus, attention, and rigorous research.

The premise of this text relies on looking at the last ten days of the war after Adolf Hitler commits suicide in his bunker. There are numerous vignettes that build a narrative based on information about events from earlier years of the war, but in one form or another they all follow the threads that Jones weaves to come back to these fateful and climactic ten days. One of the more controversial issues the author deals with is rape on both the Eastern and Western Fronts. This is a subject that has yet to be fully explored by scholars for many reasons, but slowly more pieces of the puzzle are making their way into recent monographs (two recent examples are: "The Soviet occupation of Germany" by Filip Slaveski and "What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France" by Mary Louise Roberts). My biggest issue is the broad brush that's often used to paint the entirety of the Red Army as guilty of some rather large arbitrary number of rapes in either Berlin alone or all of Germany. Jones adds to the puzzle by showing that the situation was much more complicated as, with one example, Polish forces under Red Army command perpetrated their own brand of justice on the Germans. Before the storming of Berlin the 1st Polish Army 'was forced to draw up a disciplinary ordinance to curb the wilder excesses of its soldiers' (44). Similar orders were read out to the Red Army as well, and for good reason. There were also instances when justice took the form of on the spot executions as when a Red Army colonel found an NKVD soldier guilty of rape and offered him his pistol with one bullet to end his life within a minute 'with some self respect', or else he'd finish him off as the 'coward' he was (54-55).

Throughout the text one of the main themes the author continues to stress are the choices made by the western allies and the Soviets in regards to actions on the ground, which had major consequences for each side. For instance, the promises made to the Soviets by Roosevelt and his administration in regards to Lend Lease were soon called off by Truman who attempted to utilize Lend Lease shipments as a bargaining chip, a move the Soviets were loathe to entertain. Furthermore, Montgomery's move at Lüneburg Heath was co-opted by the Dönitz government to fulfill their needs and treated as an armistice rather than an unconditional surrender, something the Soviets were angered by but allowed in lieu of being able to sign an unconditional surrender for the remainder of German troops still operating throughout Europe at a place and date of their choosing. Still, even those wishes were upset by the signing of the surrender of the German Wehrmacht at Rheims instead of Berlin, and more so by a lowly Soviet representative who was simply available, rather than Marshal Zhukov. In part the signing at Rheims was the fault of Eisenhower who was keen on ending the war as soon as possible and wanted peace yet needed to simultaneously keep in mind the wishes of his Soviet allies, who were not always as forthcoming as they should have been.

Aside from the above, some of the more interesting discussions revolved around the Prague Uprising and the role of Vlasov's Russian Liberation Army in helping the resistance fight their German occupiers until they could no longer hold out with the Red Army making its way to Prague for a liberation of their own of the last Eastern European capital still under German control. Additionally, the resistance of a Georgian Legion battalion on the Dutch Island of Texel was a complete surprise to me, as was how the Soviets treated the survivors and the memory of this incident. Overall, I can't praise the author enough for what he's done in this volume. Taking a look at the last ten days from the point of view of Soviet, American, British, German, and even Canadian eye-witness accounts brings an original look at the chaos of the final days of the Second World War. On May 8 and 9 a reprieve for many occurred as VE Day was celebrated. And soon enough the alliance that so many worked so hard to form will crumble as old issues creep up once again to create a new threat in the form of a Cold War (one whose language in many ways becomes recycled, by both sides, from the rhetoric they worked out so well during the Second World War).

There were some weaknesses that I encountered. I am disappointed in the system of 'endnotes' used here as it made tracing information more difficult than it needed to be and I believe footnotes would have been the better alternative as this is to a large extent a scholarly work. There were references to the Warsaw Uprising (August 1944) but they were somewhat inaccurate and dismissive of the Red Army and Stalin. In many ways this is a perfect example of an area that continues to wait for further scholarship as current volumes are still vague and greatly lacking when it comes to the Soviet side of things. Finally, some of the material here is gathered from various internet websites that, while overall presenting useful and interesting information, are not always accurate. Aside from these minor issues, this is a highly recommended volume and a great addition to literature on both the waning days of the Second World War and the foundations that were being set by the western allies and Soviet Union in what would become the Cold War. show less