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Haven't been around for a while. You know how sometimes life gets in the way. This time though it was me being support for my sick mother, away from home and computer - that drove me crazy after only a short time!
But it gave me time to finish my second reading of Annette Carson's marvellous book Richard III - The Maligned Monarch, and get through David Hipshon's new book Richard III and The Death Of Chivalry, which, as he is publishing a full biography of Richard next year, I had high hopes of.
The first chapter contains some silly mistakes, one example - George Stanley, Lord Strange is held hostage at Bosworth for his father William Stanley's good behaviour!
However, once past the introduction chapter, he gets into his stride, and at times I began to think he was taking the Paul Murray Kendall route, which his writing at times reminded me of. There is also a marvellous dishing of the dreadful Michael Hicks theory about the marriage of Richard and Anne!
But when he gets to the events of 1483 he begins to turn into Alison Weir! The pre contract is dismissed as nonsense, (why do so many historians not see this as typical of Edward IV's behaviour - promise anything to get laid?) Richard's guilt over killing his nephews is in his view beyond doubt, and Annette Carson's book gets a note in which he compares it to 'a quasi religious phenomenen', part of 'a cult of adulation that brooks no heresy.'
Judging from the book I doubt he has actually read Annette's book, in which she bends over backwards to include all theories, that is ALL, including the traditionalist ones, yet manages to show Richard in a good light in virtually every single case. Erudite, intelligent, readable, Annette's book is marvellous for anyone with an interest in the truth of what happened in 1483 - 85. And all he conclusions are sensible, and not based on wish fullfilment or leaps of faith, as so many traditionalist ones are.
David Hipshon happens to be teaching my nephew, so I plan to get in touch.
More anon.

Richard liveth yet