PositiveThe Spectator (UK)... gripping ... while professing to offer a triptych analysis of the three enigmatic brothers at the heart of this dynasty — Edward IV, George, Duke of Clarence and Richard III — Penn has largely written a richly contextualised and meticulously researched biography of just the first of these figures: Edward IV is the focus of 450 pages of the book’s narrative ... In calling this biographical study tragedy, Penn argues that there is ‘a tragic flaw in the Yorkist dynasty’ and that ‘the tragedy of the brothers York was that they destroyed themselves’. This is a useful corrective to those triumphalist accounts which see the Tudors as masters of historical destiny, with Lancastrians quashing Yorkists in the march towards modernity ... While Penn’s book is only passingly about Richard III, it is a vital corrective to the ongoing, polarising battle over his legacy that has raged since 2012, after his remains were unearthed in Leicester ... This book refuses to airbrush Richard’s violent reputation but, in its careful excavation of the court and politics of Edward IV, it does show that the seeds of the destruction of the House of York were sown well before he took to the throne.
