Two New Books

I have not one but two new books out this month! Blood Roses: The Houses of Lancaster and York Before the Wars of the Roses is already out in the UK: see Amazon; Goodreads; Waterstones; Book Depository. It covers the period from 1245, the year Edmund of Lancaster, founder of the House of Lancaster, was born, to 1400, the year Richard II, deposed by his cousin Henry IV as the first Lancastrian king, died at Pontefract Castle. Blood Roses is divided into four parts: 1245 to 1296, 1296 to 1330, 1330 to 1362, and 1362 to 1400, and an epilogue covers the years 1400 to 1422. There are ten family trees at the front.

The contents of Blood Roses (1)

The contents of Blood Roses (2)

And my bio of Hugh Despenser the Younger, Downfall of a King's Favourite, is out very soon - on Amazon it's showing as already available for sale rather than pre-order, but it also says 'dispatched within one to two months' (!!) so it seems that the copies aren't there yet. It's the first-ever bio of this powerful man who was once voted 'the greatest villain of the fourteenth century' in BBC History Magazine! It's also on Goodreads; Book Depository; Waterstones. There are two appendices, the first a list of Hugh's children* with biographical details and (often approximate) dates of birth and death, and the second Hugh's itinerary from May 1306 - the month of his wedding to Eleanor de Clare - until his execution on 24 November 1326. For the first few years of Edward II's reign it's really hard to establish Hugh's whereabouts except on a handful of days in any year, but after he returned from exile in March 1322 I was able to ascertain his location on many days in any given month. I've translated a few of Hugh's own letters which have never been seen before, except for historians able to read Anglo-Norman. Hugh was a pirate and an extortionist, highly intelligent and articulate, greedy beyond description for lands and money, manipulative to the nth degree, and ruthless. In short, he was huuuuuuge fun to write about and, I hope, will be fun to read about. :-)

* He had at least ten legitimate children, of whom nine (Huchon, Edward, Gilbert, John, Isabella, Joan, Eleanor, Margaret and Elizabeth) survived infancy, and may have been the out-of-wedlock father of Nicholas Litlington, abbot of Westminster (c. 1312/15-1386).

The contents of Downfall of a King's Favourite.

First part of Hugh's itinerary, long before he became Edward II's chamberlain and 'favourite' and his whereabouts are difficult to determine.