The Battle of Bosworth

by Michael Bennett

Book by Bennett, Michael

Genres: History, Medieval History, Military Fiction

197 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Librarian note: There are multiple authors with this name in this data base. This one is Michael^^^^^Bennett.

Reviews

[Bill38silver · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not being over-familiar with fifteenth century history, I struggled to get through this work seemingly taking about as long to read it as Henry Tudor did to invade unopposed and progress slowly to the battle site. The book is poorly titled as over half the near 200 pages are gone before you actually get to the less than exhaustive detail of the battle itself.

The opening is not encouraging: the author says sources for the battle are meagre, frequently muddled, inconsistent and subject to partisan distortion. Then the account veers off topic with oodles of tenuous links to past events (some over 100 years old or more).

I found the most interesting part was the Appendix giving details of the main sources, dovetailing with the comments in the opening remarks. In between these book-ends, there was a lot of variable information to battle through.

[Sascha Gabriel · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book that's firmly in the 'that Richard, ''e did it'' and definitely pro Tudor *sigh* despite the fact it's called The Battle of Bosworth, gives little detail that you can't find in an average history book. Plus points, (as any historian knows) in this regard do include in this work the age-old problem of 'where did this battle actually take place, and when' but this historiography tailed off to talk of the Tudors once more.

Indeed, it was not the epoch ending battle that convention dictates, and does not mark the end of the Middle Ages in England, but that's not been taught as true for decades, so despite the fact this book is less than 5 years old, it's already sounding rather dated. If he tried to research who did kill the princes, then his results are more vague than inconclusive.

It would be a good introductory book for GCSE/A level provided one keeps an open mind about Richard's motives for taking the throne,(rather than the one-sided portrayal here) and his role in disposing of his nephews. Sadly, this is/are THE issue(s) of his reign so I put the finished book down, still dissatisfied.