Paul Lay
Spearing the Boar
Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors
By Chris Skidmore
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 437pp £20
In February of this year, speculation about the identity of the body found beneath a Leicester car park – soon confirmed to be Richard III – was at its height. At the time, Chris Skidmore published an article in the Daily Telegraph entitled ‘The Hunchback is dead, long live Good King Richard’ in which he seemed to throw in his lot with the Richard III Society, the less-than-objective campaign group established in 1924 to rescue the reputation of the last Plantagenet monarch and his reign of two years and two months from the ‘black legend’ of Tudor propagandists such as Shakespeare and the proto-historian Polydore Vergil. It was a surprising contribution, as Skidmore, a young Conservative MP with a particular interest in education, had shown himself, in a notable study of Edward VI, to be a popular historian of scholarly bent. One can only assume that he was caught up in the excitement of the moment, as his latest offering is a thoughtful, well-sourced, though curiously bloodless account of one of the most famous battles in English history.
Bosworth opens with a survey of the early life of Henry Tudor, whose 28 years of peripatetic uncertainty before his victory at Bosworth in 1485 was at the root of his lifelong paranoia. Skidmore’s account suffers when compared to the vivid, bracing narrative offered by Thomas Penn’s 2011 biography, Winter
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm