The concluding volume to this rousing two-part history of the Wars of the Roses, England’s longest and bloodiest civil war, narrated by a master historian.
England, 1462.
he Yorkist Edward IV has been king for three years since his victory at Towton. The former Lancastrian King Henry VI languishes in the Tower of London. But Edward will soon alienate his backers by favoring the family of his ambitious wife, Elizabeth Woodville. And he will fall out with his chief supporter, Warwick “the Kingmaker,” with dire consequences.

In the second half of the fifteenth century, for over thirty years, civil war tore England apart. However, its roots were deeper and its thorns were felt for longer than this time frame suggests. The Wars of the Roses were not a coherent period of continual warfare. There were distinct episodes of conflict, interspersed with long periods of peace. But the struggles never really ceased.

Romancing Treason addresses the scope and significance of the secular literary culture of the Wars of the Roses, and especially of the Middle English romances that were distinctively written in prose during this period. Megan Leitch argues that the pervasive textual presence of treason during the decades c.1437-c.1497 suggests a way of conceptualising the understudied space between the Lancastrian literary culture of the early fifteenth century and the Tudor literary cultures of the early and mid-sixteenth century.

The Poetry of Roses is a book for gardeners, lovers, poets for anyone who has paused to drink in the rose's essence. Its exquisite photographs complement poetry from all places and times: in these pages, ancient Greek poetess Sappho joins whirling dervish Jalaluddin Rumi in speaking of the soul's joy in the rose. Haiku master Basho takes a petal shower beneath mountain roses. Native Americans sing of the colors of roses in love charms, while contemporary Brazilian author Jorge Luis Borges unfolds an invisible rose and reveals its erotic center.

The true story of the White Queen and more, this is a thrilling history of the extraordinary noblewomen who lived through the Wars of the Roses.
The events of the Wars of the Roses are usually described in terms of the men involved: Richard Duke of York, Henry VI, Edward IV and Henry VII. But these years were also packed with women’s drama and – in the tales of conflicted maternity and monstrous births – alive with female energy.