Spectator Books: the tragic self-destruction of the House of York

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4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 30 October 2019

⏱️ 35 minutes

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Summary

In this week’s Spectator Books, Sam talks to the award-winning historian Thomas Penn about his new book The Brothers York: An English Tragedy — in which he argues that the 'Wars of the Roses' weren’t determined by a struggle between the houses of York and Lancaster so much as by the catastrophic white-on-white conflict that cause the House of York to implode. He tells the story of three brothers — Edward IV; George, Duke of Clarence; and Richard III — and their extraordinary and ultimately disastrous relationship. How did Tudor history — including, of course, Shakespeare — distort the real story of those years? Who really drowned the Duke of Clarence in that butt of wine? And did anyone, like Sam, have their sense of this vital period in history shaped by, er, playing the board game Kingmaker?

Spectator Books is a series of literary interviews and discussions on the latest releases in the world of publishing, from poetry through to physics. Presented by Sam Leith, The Spectator's Literary Editor. Hear past episodes of Spectator Books here.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before you start listening to this podcast, a reminder that we have a special subscription offer.
0:04.8	You can get 12 issues of The Spectator for £12, as well as a £20,000, Amazon voucher.
0:10.3	Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher if you'd like to get this offer.
0:20.8	Hello and welcome to The Spectator Books podcast.
0:23.6	I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator, and this week I'm very pleased to be joined by Thomas Penn, whose first book, The Winter King was a biography of Henry the 7th, which was hugely fated and won practically every prize going.
0:36.8	His new book, a couple of years later,
0:39.1	is called The Brothers York and English Tragedy, which jumps back from the 16th to the 15th century.
0:46.3	Thomas, to start with, can I just ask, why do you give it this provocative subtitle? Why is it an English
0:52.8	tragedy? Well, Sam, firstly, thank you very much
0:55.2	for having me. It's lovely to be here. An English tragedy? Well, firstly, of course, the reign
1:02.8	of Richard III has tragic connotations. Shakespeare wrote the tragedy of Richard the 3rd,
1:07.3	but it's much more than that, I think. What happens on the 22nd of August 1485 when Richard the 3rd, but it's much more than that, I think. What happens on the 22nd of August
1:12.3	1485 when Richard the 3rd is beaten and killed by Henry Tudor is the end of something. It's the
1:20.0	end of this great house of Plantagenet. But more to the point, it's an epic act of self-destruction
1:27.2	on the part of the House of York, on the part of
1:29.6	these three brothers who I foreground in the book. And it's tragic in the classical sense,
1:34.8	because it needn't have happened. It needn't have happened, but it was inevitable as well. And why is
1:41.2	that? In part because the House of York was an incredibly successful dynasty.
1:47.5	Edward IV, the king who reigned from 1461 to 1483,
1:51.7	with a brief hiatus in 147071,
1:54.8	had everything that was needed really to hand on his dynasty.
1:59.2	He had male children. He was very successful, he was very
	...

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