Richard III: England's Most Controversial King

by Chris Skidmore, Steven Crossley (Narrator)

From acclaimed historian Chris Skidmore comes the authoritative biography of Richard III, England's most controversial king, a man alternately praised as a saint and cursed as a villain.  

Richard III is one of English history's best known and least understood monarchs. Immortalized by Shakespeare as a hunchbacked murderer, the discovery in 2012 of his skeleton in a Leicester parking lot reignited debate over the true character of England's most controversial king.  

Richard was born into an age of brutality, when civil war gripped the land and the Yorkist dynasty clung to the crown with their fingertips. Was he really a power-crazed monster who killed his nephews or the victim of the first political smear campaign conducted by the Tudors?   

In the first full biography of Richard III for 50 years, Chris Skidmore draws on new manuscript evidence to reassess Richard's life and times. Richard III examines in intense detail Richard's inner nature and his complex relations with those around him to unravel the mystery of the last English monarch to die on the battlefield.

Audible Audio

Published November 27, 2018

About the author

Chris Skidmore was born in 1981. He was educated at Bristol Grammar School and Christ Church, Oxford, where he was a St Cyre's and Dixon Scholar and President of the Oxford University Historical Society. He graduated in 2002 with a double first and was awarded a Gibbs Prize. Chris conducted postgraduate research at Oxford, where he was a convenor of a graduate seminar on the Tudor nobility. He was an adviser and researcher to Bristol's bid for European Capital City of Culture 2008 and was research assistant to Robert Lacey for his Great Tales of English History series. Chris has also written for the Western Daily Press and People Magazine. Chris currently teaches Early Modern History part-time at Bristol University. He served as Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Kingswood from 2010 to 2024 and held several government ministerial posts between 2016 and 2020.

Reviews

[Devon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A look at Richard the III’s life BUT throwing him into the thick of things, when Edward the IV is tug-of-war’ing with Henry the VI, and ending with his death on the field of battle.

I’d say this isn’t as perfect a book given that a LOT of the beginning of the book is more focused on Edward. I get it because it sets up the power struggles at play and gives motivation behind Richard’s later ruthlessness, but it also takes focus away from him.

Otherwise, it’s very readable and the narrator is good. It’s also funny I see now I’ve timed it almost exactly to coincide with his death day, which is a strange coincidence.

Side-note: Genuinely don’t know how people can love him so much they’re in a society (TWO?!) for him. He basically had his mother-in-law declared dead to get at her lands, was almost certainly involved in Henry VI’s death, moved against his friend Hastings when he wouldn’t back him and had him executed, cried plots of treason against anyone who was against him like his brother’s wife’s kin, having them executed after pretending to make friendly with them before having them seized, started grabbing up land, said his mother slept with other men so Edward IV was illegitimate, attacked the legality of his brother’s marriage by saying he was pre-contracted first to one then to a different woman, shamed a woman and had her go through the streets in penitence, almost certainly had his nephews executed, was in dire peril fighting Henry Tudor but demanded execution of the son of the Stanley traitor…like THIS is the man you guys fall to your knees over? Is he a very interesting historical figure? Most definitely. Would I burst into tears over him and vociferously declare any negative attributes applied to him as Tudor propaganda/perfectly fine for the time? Er…no.