Thomas Penn

Historian Dr Thomas Penn tells the dramatic story of the brothers York – Edward, George and Richard – who were the figureheads of a ruling dynasty in 15th-century England and at the heart of the War of the Roses.

Penn explains how the brothers turned on each other and unleashed a chain of rebellion, vendetta, fratricide, usurpation and regicide. It is a story of a family at war and so unable to sustain its power and influence that it destroyed itself in the space of one generation.

‘The three York brothers spring to ferocious life, and you need strong nerves to meet them. With insight and skill, Penn cuts through the thickets of history to find the heart of these heartless decades.’ – Hilary Mantel

Penn is author of the bestselling Winter King, about the dawn of Tudor England, winner of the H W Fisher Best First Biography Prize. He writes for the Guardian and London Review of Books.