Through the turbulence of civil war, Martin serves his cousins -- Yorkist kings Edward IV and Richard III -- and learns the cost of loyalty and love in battlefields and bedchambers in a time when life is cheap and treachery hides behind a smile. Through Martin's eyes, Meredith Whitford's superbly researched and richly woven novel shows Shakespeare's conniving and perverse Richard III in a realistic new light - as a patriot and a lover. Never before has perceived history taken such a surprising turn as Whitford corrects the Shakespearean myth and crowns a new hero, bringing back to life the passion and heat of a breathless historical moment that shaped the world - a moment we know as the War of the Roses .a time of thorns and treason.

    Between 1455 and 1485 four kings, including Richard III, lost their thrones, more than forty noblemen lost their lives on the battlefield or their heads on the block, and thousands of the men who followed them met violent deaths. As they made their way in a disintegrating world, the Paston family in Norfolk family were writing letters - about politics, about business, about shopping, about love and about each other, including the first valentine.Using these letters - the oldest surviving family correspondence in English - Helen Castor traces the extraordinary history of the Paston family across three generations. Blood & Roses tells the dramatic, moving and intensely human story of how one family survived one of the most tempestuous periods in English history.

    Trevor Yorke first charts the origins of the abbey and traces its development from the late 5th century to the Dissolutions of the Monasteries in 1536. He also looks at their fate since.The second section examines their individual parts in detail, beginning with the most striking feature of monastic ruins, the church. He then looks at the cloister buildings, including the kitchen and dormitory; the workshops, guest houses and gardens; and finally the abbey estates.The final section contains an illustrated time chart for dating abbeys, a glossary of unfamiliar terms and a list of recommended abbeys and priories to visit.

    Finally, he considers how resilient the Portuguese overseas communities were, surviving wars and natural disasters, and fending off attacks by the more heavily armed English and Dutch invaders until well into the 1600s.Including a detailed bibliography and glossary, A History of Portuguese Overseas Expansion 1400-1668 is an invaluable textbook for all those studying this fascinating period of European expansion

    Focusing on Florence, a prime center of Renaissance culture, the book explores for the first time the profound impact of Netherlandish works on Italian painters including Leonardo, Perugino, and Ghirlandaio.Paula Nuttall discusses Italian ownership of Netherlandish paintings in the fifteenth century and the shared artistic concerns of Florentine and Netherlandish painters. She examines in depth the various means by which artistic contact occurred, the growth in demand for Netherlandish art in Florence, and the holdings of the Medici and other collectors. With particular emphasis on the period 1460–1500, when the vogue for Netherlandish painting was at its height, the author shows that the consequences of Italian exposure to Netherlandish art were far more sweeping than has been understood before.