Folio Archives 451: Richard III by Desmond Seward 2014

Richard III: England’s Black Legend by Desmond Seward. 2014

Richard III was undoubtedly England’s most notorious and controversial king and Seward follows his life in great detail from his difficult birth (he was a breech baby) in 1452 to his ignominious end.

He contrived a coup d’état that deposed the demented Henry VI then arranged for his sons to be killed in the Tower of London to secure his succession. Some loyal friends he rewarded with wealth and dukedoms, while others he had summarily executed without trial. There are innumerable intrigues and deceptions chronicled in the text.

He stole from widows, leaving them to become beggars while bribing others to support him with embezzled funds. He had a war with Scotland that he won but in the end, many of his supporters abandoned him and a civil war followed that resulted in Richard’s demise.

The xxvi+284 page book is beautifully bound in crimson buckram that is blocked on both covers and spine with a heraldic design in gilt and white by Joe McLaren. There is a six page forward by Thomas Penn. It contains a frontispiece, 12 pages of bound-in colour plates and 6 integrated brass rubbings. The red endpapers are printed in gold with a crown pattern. The plain black slipcase measures 24.7x16.8cm.

There are two genealogical tables and a line drawn map of England at the front of the book and at the back a chronology, bibliography, extensive notes and an index.















































































An index of the other illustrated reviews in the "Folio Archives" series can be viewed here.

Nice. Thanks for sharing Warwick. Seward is one of my favourite historians.

>1 wcarter: "He contrived a coup d’état that deposed the demented Henry VI then arranged for his sons to be killed in the Tower of London to secure his succession."

I think you've conflated a few monarchs here: it was Edward IV (Richard's elder brother) who deposed Henry VI, and the children killed (we assume) in the Tower were Edward IV's (the uncrowned Edward V and Richard, Duke of York - the "Princes in the Tower"; Henry VI had only one son (another Edward, Prince of Wales - the Middle Ages would be a lot less confusing if they didn't just keep reusing the same three or four names!), who died at the Battle of Tewkesbury a decade before Richard became king).