Richard III

"A bold and fresh new biography of one of the most enduringly fascinating monarchs . . . steeped in the latest research and majestically narrated." —Dan Jones, award-winning historian and New York Times– bestselling author of The Plantagenets From acclaimed historian Chris Skidmore comes the authoritative biography of Richard III, England's most controversial king, a man alternately praised as a saint and cursed as a villain. Richard III is one of English history's best known and least understood monarchs. Immortalized by Shakespeare as a hunchbacked murderer, the discovery in 2012 of his skeleton in a Leicester parking lot re-ignited debate over the true character of England's most controversial king. Richard was born into an age of brutality, when civil war gripped the land and the Yorkist dynasty clung to the crown with their fingertips. Was he really a power-crazed monster who killed his nephews, or the victim of the first political smear campaign conducted by the Tudors? In the first full biography of Richard III for fifty years, Chris Skidmore draws on new manuscript evidence to reassess Richard's life and times. Richard III examines in intense detail Richard's inner nature and his complex relations with those around him to unravel the mystery of the last English monarch to die on the battlefield. "This highly readable chronicle comprises vaulting ambition, familial betrayal, moral corruption, high politics, foul murder and a beautiful queen lusting for revenge." — Wall Street Journal "[Skidmore's] biography bids fair to become the definitive account for the 21st century." — Washington Independent Review of Books "A gripping, vivid, fresh portrait of Richard III." —Simon Sebag Montefiore "A portrait that chills you to the bone." —The Times of London