Fatal Colours, Towton 1461

“The red rose and the white are on his face, the fatal colours of our striving houses" (from Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part 3)

How many times I have driven up the A1M and the taken the turn-off to York oblivious to the nearby site of Towton and its significance? This year is the 550th anniversary of the ferocious Battle of Towton, the largest and longest battle of the Wars of the Roses which Shakespeare depicts in Act 2 of Henry VI Part 3. It took place on Palm Sunday 29th March 1461 in a blizzard and lasted for about ten hours; it was probably the bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil. Contemporary accounts, including a letter written by Edward IV to his mother, Cecily Neville, the day after the battle, put the losses at 28,000. And with the Yorkists victory against the Lancastrian force it settled the first Wars of the Roses in favour of Edward IV, at the time only 18 years old.

This brutal battle is well handled in George Goodwin’s book ‘Fatal Colours’. And thanks to him I have discovered a very important piece of history that contributes once more to my Plantagenet’s jigsaw, that’s currently my latest historical passion after the Tudors. Goodwin's book is a careful examination of the events at Towton but also creates the backdrop of fifteenth-century England. From the death of Henry V, with his baby son's inheritance first of England, then of France, he chronicles the vicissitudes of the 100 Years War abroad and the vicious in-fighting at home. He brilliantly describes a decade of breakdown of both king and kingdom, as increasingly embittered factions struggle for supremacy that could only be secured after the carnage of Towton.

A very enjoyable read that unfortunately was a bit spoilt for me by the clichéd depiction of Richard of Gloucester (later III) as a scheming and evil duke and subsequently monarch who not only murdered his young nephews in the Tower but also personally killed the crazy Henry VI. I think this is an accusation too far that, according to my knowledge and sources of information, has no historical evidence.



(George Goodwin talks about the Battle of Towton on BBC Look North)

The Historian

Steve’s comment on my last post made me think back to a great book that I read some time ago, long before the Twilight saga and similar sloppy vampire stories. It’s called the Historian and is Elizabeth Kostova’s debut novel. When I bought it I was a little worried as I thought it could be for the lovers of vampire books that drip blood and are full of gore and scantily clad females. But this is a very intelligent book, falling into the genre of great classical literature. Elizabeth Kostova has made Dracula truly terrifying, and more importantly, historically significant, yet again.
It’s about time somebody got Vlad the Impaler right.

(Vlad Tepes/The Impaler)

There have always been two different ways to approach the Dracula legend: through the literature, which is most famous due to Bram Stoker’s classic, or through history and the life and times of Vlad Tepes who lived in Wallachia (part of Romania) and died fighting the Ottoman Turks in 1476. Yes, there really was a Dracula. But the legend, particularly the literary legend, long ago eclipsed the history. Not many people know that Dracula was a warrior, that he led successful fights against Ottoman invasions, that he was religious, or that he served as both a hero and ferocious enemy of his own people.

The legend has always been more appealing and as the vampire cult has grown over the years and pervaded pretty much all aspects of popular culture. Dracula the man has faded into the deep recesses of medieval history. No one stays awake in those classes. Kostova credits her father in the book’s dedication as telling her the stories that grew into this book, and clearly she has always had a different vision of Dracula, a more serious and scholarly vision then the average theatergoer. She knows he was dangerous because he was real, because a man once committed the acts that are credited to a monster. This is something that often eludes people. We want to believe that Hitler was a beast, Stalin inherently evil, that the 9/11 hijackers had to have been demons and never ordinary, average men. What is bad must always have been monstrous and not like us; never like us. Dracula was a vampire, the undead. Dracula as soldier or even a child hostage? How could that be?

(Rennes-les-Bains)

Well, that’s where the book comes in handy. The Historian is a mystery, a thriller, a romance. It is first and foremost a story of a father and daughter who each becomes embroiled in the Dracula legend. It is also though the story of a missing man, a forgotten love, and another daughter who wants the truth. It is the story of men of God who protect a devil and Turks and Romanians and Bulgarians and a lot of monasteries. There are libraries and archives and ancient clues, even an ancient society of warriors. In short, The Historian is all things that make a book compulsively readable and everything that a truly gifted author can produce.

The first main storyline follows Helen and Paul in the early 1950s as they try to find Dracula’s grave and the secrets it might hold to the disappearance of Paul’s college adviser and mentor, a man who had also pursued the Dracula legend in the 1930s. The current storyline is that of Paul’s daughter in 1972, who ends up on her own adventure after her father abruptly departs on a business trip that she is convinced is actually a resumption of his Dracula research. Over both time periods the specter of Dracula is everywhere it seems, throughout the historical documents they read; in the places they visit, in the faces of those who try to stop them. Ultimately he proves to be crueler then they could have imagined and his effect on all of their lives is incalculable.

The Historian was a great read and what contributed to make it that way was also my timing. I read most of the book when I was on holiday near Rennes-les-Bains, a small village in the Languedoc, on the borders with the Pyrenees, where a rather disturbing part of the book is set. The gîte where we stayed was a bit isolated and the surrounding country side was very dark and silent at night. One night a terrible thunderstorm infuriated through the area the wind was whipping around the house, it was really scary weather. I was so frightened that I ended up sleeping with all the lights on! All in all, a book and an experience I will never forget.