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Richard the Third

4.12 of 5 stars 4.12 · rating details · 617 ratings · 36 reviews

Paul Murray Kendall's masterful account of the life of England's King Richard III has remained the standard biography of this controversial figure.

Paperback, 608 pages

Published April 17th 2002 by W. W. Norton & Company (first published 1955)

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Nov 30, 2008 Ikonopeiston rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Ricardians, history buffs

Shelves: non-fiction, ricardian

This is the biography which Sharon Kay Penman used as the principal source for her superb novel "The Sunne in Splendour". Kendall is considered to be one of the most useful and excellent biographers of this much maligned king. His scholarship is impeccable and his notes are fascinating. He quite fairly presents the evidence for the guilt of the three main suspects in the deaths of Edward V and his brother, the Duke of York. So far as I can tell, he has rounded up all the available contemporary i...more

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Feb 06, 2009 Paul rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history, wars-of-the-roses

Possibly one of the best, if not the standard work, of biography of Richard III. Far from the twisted caricature of Shakespeare or even the propaganda of the Tudors, desperate to legitimise their Regicide, Richard of Gloucester is a man driven by loyalty and obligation. He's not the perfect and kind King some have tried to re-invent him as, but he's far more human than the monster of the Bard.

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Nov 20, 2008 Jennifer rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, non-fiction, best-beloved

Richard III is my historical boyfriend; I would run headlong into the TARDIS and never look back, just for the chance to go back and look once upon his face.

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Jan 18, 2008 Jennifer (JC-S) rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: owned

I've been reading this book on and off over some months as part of some broader research.

I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to read a biography about Richard III. Some excellent historical fiction has been written about Richard but he is often either reviled (as the dastardly murderer of the princes in the Tower of London) or revered as the noble king slain at the battle of Bosworth.

While sympathetic towards Richard, Mr Kendall provides a well written biography which is accessible to non acade...more

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Jun 29, 2008 Carol is currently reading it

I'm rereading this book to refresh my memory of the real Richard III after reading "The Sunne in Splendour." Kendall's assessment of Richard is balanced and fair, based on careful analysis of the existing sources, with the basis for any speculation always carefully explained in the notes. If your idea of Richard comes from Shakespeare or Sir Thomas More, or if you simply like to read about real people in troubled times faced with moral dilemmas and betrayals, you'll enjoy this book, which is not...more

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Mar 24, 2011 Caroline rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography, english-history, medieval-history

I took a long time to read this, more so as I got through it, because I was delaying reaching the end, even though I know what happens. I didn't want Richard to die. I'm a die-hard Ricardian, always have been, always will be. I don't believe Richard was evil, I don't believe he murdered the Princes in the Tower, and I'll hate Henry VII until the day I die. I believe Richard was a good man who perhaps should never have been king, a man who believed in justice, loyalty and honesty, and who was mor...more

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Mar 26, 2013 Mike Luoma rated it 5 of 5 stars

A great biography thoroughly researched and based as much as possible on contemporary and near-contemporary sources. Picked it up as it was advertised as the preeminent bio on Richard III. Been curious and fascinated by his figure since February when they declared that the remains they'd found in Leicester were indeed the late king's - "The King In The Car Park". As a student of modern poltics, it's been fascinating to try to unravel the Tudor "spin" perpetrated upon Richard III by Shakespeare,...more

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Jan 11, 2011 Megan rated it 3 of 5 stars

The best thing this book has going for it is that it is one of the only ones I've read to paint Richard III in a completely neutral -- and sometimes positive -- light. Kendall strives to repair Richard's shattered reputation, and theorizes that the youngest brother of King Edward IV was motivated purely by a drive to govern England as he felt his brother should have. This book is DRY. It was difficult to slog through most of the time. But the POV is refreshing. It's nice to read something positi...more

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May 10, 2013 Matt rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography

Paul Murray Kendall's Richard the Third is a readable biographical introduction of the last Plantagenet King of England that for many only comes to mind as the sinister hunchback of Shakespeare. Even though over 50 years worth of research has outdated some of Kendall's evidence, his overall body of work gives the reader a truer glimpse of Richard the man than from Richard the arch villain. From the outset, Kendall informs his reader of personal interpretations he has made from evidence through t...more

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Aug 12, 2012 Cindy rated it 5 of 5 stars

"If he had committed a grievous wrong, he had sought earnestly to do great good."

Never before have I been so enthralled with any aspect of history. Paul Murray Kendall paints a factually accurate but immensely fascinating portrait of a complicated man living in a completely foreign time. Richard's lot in history is usually at one end of the good/evil spetrum -- either a cold-blooded murderer or a misunderstood scapegoat. Kendall doesn't buy into this unnecessary categorization, but instead explo...more "If he had committed a grievous wrong, he had sought earnestly to do great good."

Never before have I been so enthralled with any aspect of history. Paul Murray Kendall paints a factually accurate but immensely fascinating portrait of a complicated man living in a completely foreign time. Richard's lot in history is usually at one end of the good/evil spetrum -- either a cold-blooded murderer or a misunderstood scapegoat. Kendall doesn't buy into this unnecessary categorization, but instead explores in depth all of the complexities that make up the man.

Whether or not Richard killed the Princes in the Tower is largely irrelevant to the crown he wore, the empire he built, and the legacy he left for his subjects. Nevertheless, Kendall's treatment of this question reveals the care he takes not only to ensure that the history he reports is conveyed accurately from the original sources, but even more importantly to curate his sources with the scrutiny required to evaluate their trustworthiness.

Kendall is keenly aware that "the worth of a source as a whole casts light upon the worth of any single piece of testimony it advances," and is rightfully outraged by anyone who tries to claim that one reliable piece of evidence "vouches for the essential reliability" of the source as a whole, "simply because one detail seems to correspond with the truth." Character, motivation, and bias are all taken into accunt when evaluating all evidence.

And Kendall isn't content to merely rifle through documents (but oh, how he does...I never would have imagined the wealth of relevant information to be found in something like the Wardrobe Accounts). He even consulted dentists and anthropologists to assess the conclusions made in 1933 from the physical evidence of the bodies found in the Towers in 1674, wisely stating that "Since he conclusions of science are not static, it seemed to me wise to submit the anatomical and dental evidence...to authoritative scrutiny."

He is more careful with drawing conclusions than most scientists are when reporting their own findings. Kendall manages to simultaneously tell you what he can't say because the evidence doesn't conclusively support it, while still making important conclusions. As one example, he narrows down the list of probable suspects in the case of the Princes in the Tower to those who were around during Richard's reign (so Henry VII gets a pass on this one): "As the matter stands, it can be asserted that (a) if these are the skeletons of the Princes, then the boys were killed in the summer of 1483; and (b) it is very probable that these are indeed the skeletons of the Princes."

Kendall also makes it clear that context is everything. Behavior can only be evaluated within the society in which it occurs. Certainly this doesn't mean that just because all deposed monarchs end up dead -- and often by very horrible deaths -- that Richard was innocent, but it certainly does make any actions he may have taken seem more in line with the times.

Whether or not he was directly responsible for the death of the Princes, it is clear that Richard was a great man with good intentions who ruled benevolently. Kendall describes this far better than I can: "In the coils of circumstance and high place, of opportunity in the guise of duty, of warped memories of the past and cloudy urgencies of the present, Richard had seized the throne and then, very possibly, had done a far more grievous wrong; yet, though these acts cast an ironic shadow they need not cast doubt upon the intense sincerity of his moral feeling." Unfortunately the death of the Princes has overshadowed his many achievements both in battle and in society, the loyalty his subjects felt towards the man who had always treated them so well, and the responsibility Richard felt towards protecting his subjects and their interests.

But in the end, ruling well meant little. He ruled kindly and was repaid with betrayal. "The gifts Richard had bestowed out of generosity rather than policy, the treasure he had dispensed to show his good will when he might have withheld it to toughen the sinews of his enterprises, the justice he had done at the risk of alienating powerful interests, the services he had performed for the weak--all these did little for him now."

In the end, he was destroyed by his inability to rule mercilessly. He knew he had been betrayed, but rather than imprison his old friend for the sake of self-preservation, Richard allowed Lord Stanley to make his own decisions. "Richard was knowingly marching into an ambush which he had permitted these lords to set for him."

Through Kendall I felt as though I had experienced Richard's rule, and in reading of the end I mourned the loss of this great man. My heart ached at the Battle of Bosworth as Richard, betrayed by those who he had kept close and treated well, charged upon Henry Tudor crying out "Treason!" before he was beat lifeless alone on the field. I don't know if I'll ever be able to read about the Tudor dynasty without feeling guilty for betraying King Richard.

P.S. There are a lot of names (and especially a lot of Henrys) and titles ("Someone, Duke of Something"). I found this to be confusing at first, but don't let it keep you from reading or enjoying this book. You'll get used to it after a while, once you get to know the characters.(less)

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Jul 16, 2008 Ned rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: John McCain

Shelves: background, current

the first review at amazon of this book by this author (but not this edition)is correct. Leave your prejudices at the door and I would even say, enter into real history, as far as can be shown. Here follows the beginning of the first chapter, Book two, Part two, "England: 1483"

"Then this land was famously enriched . . .

Though the walls and spires of London stood in Richard's [III] sight as they had for centuries, new forces and transformations, decay and fresh growth of which Richard could only...more the first review at amazon of this book by this author (but not this edition)is correct. Leave your prejudices at the door and I would even say, enter into real history, as far as can be shown. Here follows the beginning of the first chapter, Book two, Part two, "England: 1483"

"Then this land was famously enriched . . .

Though the walls and spires of London stood in Richard's [III] sight as they had for centuries, new forces and transformations, decay and fresh growth of which Richard could only sense the first effects, coursed in the blood of the giant that, beyond the east windows of Westminster Palace, lay sprawled beside the tidal water that gave it life.
The London of King Richard more nearly resembled, perhaps, the town of Edward III than the city of Elizabeth, since the daily pageantry of the Church was yet to be shorn and suburbs would blot out environing fields and farms; but in its riches, energy and self-esteem London was far more like what it was to become under Gloriana than what it had been. It was the principle home of the king; it was now the seat of Parliament, which at the bidding of the house of York had ceased to wander from town to town; it housed the great lawyers in their inns, courtiers, bishops, foreign merchants and envoys despatched by the European princes. All the highways of the island led to the capital; its broad estuary enticed the traffic of the Channel and the seas; around it lay some of the most fertile lands in the kingdom. To the marvel of continental visitors, London blazed on the far perimeter of civilization the Queen City of the Oceans. If Paris was the largest and Rome or Venice the grandest, London was the richest and busiest of towns.
It was a filthy, crowded, clamorous hive of human activity -- its narrow streets, many unpaved, running all hugger-mugger, darkened by the leaning upper storeys of gilt and gabled houses and thick with refuse which was left to be scavenged by flocks of kites and ravens. . . .
dirty the city certainly was. It was also an architectural hodgepodge. So thought Italian visitors, accustomed to their sharply defined cities of stone. They found the homes quaint and crazy, comfortable and often opulent on the inside but built every which way as fancy and convenience dictated -- houses with ground floor of stone supporting wooden eaves and 'pentices'; houses of half-timber and whitewashed plaster; here and there a building of brick, or a thatched roof, or a stone mansion. London architecture was like the English law: traditional, eccentric and mysterious. Yet, despite themselves, these visitors were impressed, even awed. A double wonder invests their comments: their marvelling at London and their marvelling at their own enchantment.
The heart of the city -- its chief highway and its means of life -- was the clear flowing river. Small boats plied up and down like restless water bugs. The barges of the great glided westward to Westminster or down to Greenwich, floating caravans of carved wood and gilding, gay with banners, with the liveries of the oarsmen, with burnished armour or scarlet gowns. The barges slid between the traffic of the seas. The greatest vessels -- carracks of Genoa or the Flanders galleys -- had to tie up five miles below the city; but ships of a hundred tons -- and many whose prows split the oceans were no larger -- sailed up past the Tower to the city's heart. On many of these the old leg-of-mutton sail had given way to a rigging of several sails which permitted them to navigate closer to the wind and to hold their courses in heavy weather. A forest of masts and tackle grew thick along the river bank. Great cranes -- amazing to the Italians -- swung bales from ship to shore. From the Tower to Blackfriars stretched the wharves and warehouses, broken by the battlements of Baynard's Castle and by the stone bulk of the Steelyard, the shop-warehouse-legatine compund of the Easterlings which stood where Cannon Street Station stands now.
The crown of the river was the Bridge, known throughout Christendom as one of the wonders of the world. It was grander, longer and more exciting than the Rialto, the Ponte Vecchio, the Pont Neuf. With stone gates at both ends and a towered gate in the middle from which the drawbridge was worked (kept permanently lowered after 1481), London Bridge supported on its twenty pillars of bright white stone a piece of the city itself. Its ancient roadway was hemmed on both sides by the ground-floor shops of mercers and haberdashers who dwelt in the storeys above. Underneath, the current rushed with a low roar through nineteen arches; 'shooting the bridge' was only for the experienced waterman. The dwellings and the drawbridge still bore scars of the great night battle the citizens had fought with Jack Cade's rabble in the summer of 1450 and of the Bastard of Fauconberg's attack in the spring of 1471.
By present-day standards London was neither large nor populous. It housed between fifty and seventy-five thousand inhabitants -- four times the number of its nearest rivals, York and Bristol, and, in the opinion of an Italian visitor, no fewer than Florence or Rome. It stretched little more than a mile along the river and less than that from the river to its northern walls. Its extent is recalled today in the names of streets and Underground stations."(less)

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Apr 26, 2012 Leia Francis rated it 4 of 5 stars

Read it for school. Started it uninterested and at first it was sort of hard to swallow because it read a bit like a history text (very precise...). However, it is well written, extreamly informative, and I ended up enjoying it somewhat. The author also did a really good job presenting and supporting his argument of Richard's involvement in the murder of the young brothers (and his thesis of who the true murderer may be). Anyways, it's a long book and all, but I actually recommend this one. Enjo...more

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Jan 07, 2013 Paul Pensom rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 20th-c, authors-us, history, history-medieval, history-military, history-uk, non-fiction, on-loan

In a word, magnificent. I think this is one of the best works of historical biography — of history even — that I've ever read. The quality of Kendall's prose is really quite exceptional. Every page is enlivened by sentences so memorable you want to speak them aloud, just for the pleasure of hearing them roll off your tongue. His pen portraits are pithy and compelling: in just a few short paragraphs characters rise from the page, living again. And then of course there's the story he has to tell —...more

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Oct 27, 2012 Rosemary Prawdzik rated it 5 of 5 stars

Over the past few years, I've become addicted to Plantagenet history and particularly Richard III. Blame it on Sharon Kay Penman, if you will. Having read several Wars of the Roses history books, other Plantagenet biographies, and numerous historical fiction books on this "better than Hollywood screenwriters" family histories, I was anxious to read this book as it had come highly recommended. Typically I find most biographies and history books quite dry - too much quoting of sources and jumping...more

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Feb 21, 2011 Kara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: plantagent-fact

How awesome would it be if Weir and Kendall could have had a reality show, arguing with each other over whether or not Richard III killed the princes in the tower?

This book is obviously the main source of inspiration for Sunne in Splendor, and probably the bible of the Richard III society. Well researched, well presented, and when he makes guesses on the unknowns, he presents it with sound reasoning as to why he suggests what may have happened, and makes it clear what is known and unknown.

The f...more

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Jan 29, 2013 Mary Miller rated it 5 of 5 stars

Though this book takes a certain commitment, it is well worth it. Kendall poses questions as to the timing and decision making process of both Edward IV and Richard III. I found it fascinating as the Cousin's War is like a series of chess moves that lead to the nation state. Henry VII arises not as a Renaissance king but as a bottom line ruler....cold and beyond the feudal conventions, colorless in the light of the rule of Edward IV and Richard III. I t is well worth the read.

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Sep 13, 2012 Charles Davis rated it 2 of 5 stars

I doubt there will ever be a book about Richard the Third that will be definitive. Per what is there and what we know this book should probably get a higher rating but I just did not find much entertainment. When it comes to history I am easily entertained. I hope something will come forth that is much better but again as I stated earlier there are problems aplenty.

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Apr 09, 2013 Rachael Booth rated it 1 of 5 stars

I had to finally put this book down. There were just too many tiny, unnecessary details that bogged the story down. I don't care that someone was given an annual stipend of 30 pounds, 25 shillings and 13 pence. I just couldn't keep interested in the story because of this incredibly obtuse attention to useless detail.

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Apr 07, 2010 Evelyn rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, middle-ages, modern

Excellent biography! Meticulous detail and notes explaining all assertions. Kendall gets a little romantic (in the literary sense) once in a while, but it's not overbearing and mostly lets the reader form their own conclusions. Highly recommended for anyone interested in Richard III and the world he lived in.

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Oct 22, 2009 Tina rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography

Excellent biography about one of the most interesting and misunderstood figures in history- dealing with his whole career rather then those last infamous 2 years.

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Feb 01, 2013 Duncan Whitehead rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this book after skipping the first two books in the series. If anyone knows where I can pick Richard parts 1 and 2 I would be ever so grateful.

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Aug 06, 2012 S Beverage rated it 4 of 5 stars

Read this a LONG time ago, when I was obsessed with the Wars of the Roses.

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May 11, 2013 Eddy Allen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: arts-and-historical

Paul Murray Kendall's masterful account of the life of England's King Richard III has remained the standard biography of this controversial figure.

In this vivid and exuberant biography the author brilliantly succeeds in drawing a notale portrait of Richard both as a man and as a king. Carefully constructed from original authorities ans written with a keen sense of the bustling life of the fifteenth centuary this is a convincing and impressive study of a brave an cultured man, and of the last Ki...more

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Jan 10, 2012 Jenny Brown rated it 2 of 5 stars

A bit too scholarly and dry for me. DNF.

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Nov 12, 2011 Carol Snow rated it 5 of 5 stars

A very fascinating and scholarly book. A real eye-opener for me since I was only familiar with Richard through Shakespeare's play.

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Mar 20, 2013 Nicole rated it 4 of 5 stars

Despite getting tedious in spots, Kendall really fleshed out the man Richard without deviating into becoming fiction. I highly recommend this as a first non-fiction book to read about Richard III. My main problem with finishing it was knowing the end would be sad.

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Aug 26, 2012 Oshun added it · review of another edition

Just read about 50 pages online; in the process of ordering a copy. A well researched and argued book which seeks to address the common, but outrageous misinformation circulated about Richard III since Thomas More and Shakespeare invented their versions.

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Jul 29, 2010 Jo rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: biographies, history, non-fiction, medieval

Good biography of an interesting and much maligned man.

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Nov 08, 2012 Dorothy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Very interesting. So much I did not know about Richard. The Tudors trashed him to uphold their claim to the throne. Even Shakespeare got it wrong. Still a mystery about the Princes in the Tower, even though they did find what seems to be their skeletons. Excellent book!

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Dec 21, 2009 Erin Germain rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, non-fiction, plantagenets, biography, four-stars

I have to keep reminding myself just how young Richard was when he first started commanding forces for his brother. He was very able and gives the impression of being much older than he was.

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