Blood and Roses: The Paston - Hardcover

Castor, Helen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0007148089 ISBN 13: 9780007148080

Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers, 2006

Synopsis

In a span of thirty years, four kings lost their thrones, countless men lost their lives on the battlefield or their heads on the block, and others found themselves suddenly flush with gold. The Wars of the Roses tore England asunder, yet until now, almost nothing has been known about the ordinary people who lived through this extraordinary time.

Drawing on an incomparably rare trove of letters discovered in a tumbledown stately home, historian Helen Castor reconstructs the lives of the Paston family, who singlemindedly worked their way up from farmers to landed gentry. As they went about their business in a disintegrating society, the Pastons corresponded on topics ranging from politics to love, from shopping to family gossip. A wife writes her husband that she'd rather have him home than have a new gown, "even if it were scarlet." A brother reports that the handless servant, Thomas Stumps, has demanded a crossbow so that he can defend them in a siege. Five hundred years later, these voices still have the immediacy of a conversation overheard on a street corner.

Blood and Roses is a gripping and intimate biography of a family, which traces three generations of births, marriages, and deaths. Castor unravels the story of the family's tur-bulent affairs against the backdrop of civil war, bringing to vibrant life a remote and hazy era.

About this title

About the Author

Helen Castor is a historian of medieval England and a Bye-Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Her first book, Blood and Roses, was long-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize and won the English Association’s Beatrice White Prize. Her second book, She-Wolves, was selected as one of the books of the year by The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Independent, Financial Times, and BBC History Magazine. She lives in London.

Reviews

Adult/High School–Castor takes as the basis of this scholarly yet readable book the trove of letters written by members of a 15th-century English family who had climbed into the ranks of the lesser aristocracy. Other writers have taken advantage of this incredible collection, but Castor offers both the letters and a comprehensive and nuanced grasp of the world in which the Pastons lived. She has created realistic portraits, from Judge William to his embattled son John and John's hardy wife, Margaret, to their sons, the irrepressibly optimistic Sir John and his reliable stay-at-home younger brother and namesake, John. The author uses the family's story to illuminate a nation in which the Wars of the Roses had eliminated all of the old certainties for its inhabitants and forced them to think anew. Good-quality color photos and illustrations are included. For anyone who is interested in history or the Middle Ages, this book is highly recommended. For anyone who thinks that this period was boring, it's a necessity.–Ted Westervelt, Library of Congress, Washington, DC
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Starred Review. Referring to publication of the Paston letters, the "literary sensation" of 1787, Horace Walpole said, "I cannot bear to be writing when I am so eager to be reading." The letters are a collection of roughly 1,000 documents written by four generations over the course of some 70 years that provide astonishingly intimate insight into late medieval English life during the tumultuous War of the Roses. The Pastons began as peasant farmers, rose to the status of minor Norfolk gentry and strove mightily to improve their lot through the courts, business and marriage. In this multigenerational biography, Castor tells their story as a sweeping whole and allows readers to understand these people's mental world, one so alien to us and yet strikingly familiar in the most unexpected of ways. Much of their story revolves around the acquisition of land and how they tried (not always successfully) to keep it out of the hands of their sometimes violent neighbors. Castor, a history fellow at Cambridge University, nicely summarizes the complexities of 15th-century politics and culture without losing her momentum. Beautifully paced and splendidly retold, Castor's tale of one family trying to survive and thrive against the odds is popular history at its best. 8 pages of color photos, 1 map. (Apr. 11)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0007148089
• ISBN 13: 9780007148080
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448