Wars of the Roses (Jones)

The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors
Dan Jones, 2014
Penguin Group (USA)
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780670026678


Summary
The author of The Plantagenets chronicles the next chapter in British history—the historical backdrop for Game of Thrones.

The crown of England changed hands five times over the course of the fifteenth century, as two branches of the Plantagenet dynasty fought to the death for the right to rule. In this riveting follow-up to The Plantagenets, celebrated historian Dan Jones describes how the longest-reigning British royal family tore itself apart until it was finally replaced by the Tudors.

Some of the greatest heroes and villains of history were thrown together in these turbulent times, from Joan of Arc to Henry V, whose victory at Agincourt marked the high point of the medieval monarchy, and Richard III, who murdered his own nephews in a desperate bid to secure his stolen crown. This was a period when headstrong queens and consorts seized power and bent men to their will.

With vivid descriptions of the battles of Towton and Bosworth, where the last Plantagenet king was slain, this dramatic narrative history revels in bedlam and intrigue. It also offers a long-overdue corrective to Tudor propaganda, dismantling their self-serving account of what they called the Wars of the Roses. (From the publisher.)

The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England (2012) is Jones's prequel to The Wars of Roses and was adapted as a BBC documentary series in 2014.

Author Bio
• Birth—July 27, 1981
• Where— Reading, England, UK
• Education—B.A., University of Cambridge
• Currently—lives in London, England


Dan Gwynne Jones is a British writer, historian, and journalist. He was born in Reading, England, to Welsh parents and attended The Royal Latin School, a state grammar school in Buckingham. In 2002, he took a first in history at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. Currently, he lives in Battersea, London, with his wife and children.

Historian
Jones's first history book was Summer of Blood, a popular narrative history of the English Peasants' Revolt of 1381. It was published in 2009.

His second book, The Plantagenets: The Kings Who Made England, was published in 2012 in the UK and a year later in the US, where it became a New York Times bestseller. The book is a family portrait of the Plantagenet kings from Henry II to Richard II. In 2014, the BBC adapted the book into a documentary series.

The Wars of the Roses, Jones's third book was published in 2014. It picks up where The Plantagenets leaves off—the death of Henry V to the arrival of the Tudors (1420-1541).

Journalist
Jones is also a columnist at the London Evening Standard, where he writes regularly about sports. He has written for The Times (London) Sunday Times (London), Telegraph, Spectator, Daily Beast, Newsweek, Literary Review, New Statesman, GQ, BBC History Magazine, and History Today. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/20/14.)

Book Reviews
Jones tells a good story. That is a good thing, since storytelling has gone out of favor among so many historians.... He admits that the era is at times incomprehensible, yet he manages to impose upon it sufficient order to render this book both edifying and utterly entertaining. His delightful wit is as ferocious as the dreadful violence he describes.
The Times (UK)


Jones is a born storyteller, peopling the terrifying uncertainties of each moment with a superbly drawn cast of characters and powerfully evoking the brutal realities of civil war. With gripping urgency he shows this calamitous conflict unfold.
Evening Standard (UK)


Exhilarating, epic, blood-and-roses history. There are battles fought in snowstorms, beheadings, jousts, clandestine marriages, spurious genealogies, flashes of chivalry and streaks of pure malevolence.... Jones’s material is thrilling, but it is quite a task to sift, select, structure, and contextualize the information. There is fine scholarly intuition on display here and a mastery of the grand narrative; it is a supremely skilful piece of storytelling.
Sunday Telegraph (UK)


Jones’s greatest skill as a historical writer is to somehow render sprawling, messy epochs such as this one into manageable, easily digestible matter; he is keenly tuned to what should be served up and what should be omitted. And he still finds rooms for the telling anecdote and vivid descriptive passage. It makes for an engrossing read and a thoroughly enjoyable introduction to the Lancastrian-Yorkist struggle.
Spectator (UK)

A fine new history.... Tautly structured, elegantly written, and finely attuned to the values and sensibilities of the age, The Wars of the Roses is probably the best introduction to the conflict currently in print.
Mail on Sunday (UK)


(Starred review.) It’s not often that a book manages to be both scholarly and a page-turner, but British historian Jones succeeds on both counts in this entertaining follow-up to his bestselling The Plantagenets.... Jones sets a new high-water mark in the current revisionism of the Tudor era.
Publishers Weekly


[H]istorian Jones traces the British crown from the fall of Henry V in 1422 to the rise of the Tudor dynasty in the early 1500s.... [T]he author's painstaking attention to detail is the same as in his previous work.... This excellent and fairly accessible contribution to the history of the Wars of the Roses serves as a helpful corrective to previous mythologized versions. —Ben Neal, Richland Lib., Columbia, SC
Library Journal


In a follow-up to The Plantagenets...British historian Jones authoritatively sets the scene for the next brutal act: the 15th-century succession crises.... Henry V's widow, Catherine of Valois, ... remarried in some obscurity in 1431 a charming Welsh squire named Oweyn Tidr, aka Owen Tudor. Their grandson in exile, Henry Tudor, would emerge gloriously to...become King Henry VII.
Kirkus Reviews

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