The Last of the Barons

England in 1470: Warwick the Kingmaker turns against the king he crowned, and a scholar's daughter and an armourer's household are caught between the roses. Bulwer-Lytton read the chronicles for two years before writing, and appended notes defending his portrait of Richard of Gloucester against Shakespeare's. It is the best-researched English historical novel of its decade and the battle of Barnet is its finest passage. Fifty-four plates after Ford Madox Brown and Frederic Leighton and others, from medieval courts to stormy coasts, give this chronicle of Yorkist England its visual weather.