Warwick the Kingmaker

Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, 'the setter-up and plucker-down of kings', is the most renowned of fifteenth-century noblemen, the archetypal over-mighty baron who first put Edward IV on the throne, then took him down and put back Henry VI. He was also a demagogue riding high on public opinion. For a decade, he, not a king, was the arbiter of English politics. There was never another like him.

Yet, while the fifteenth century and the Wars of the Roses have been intensively studied, only one biography of the Kingmaker has been published this century, by Paul Murray Kendall over forty years ago. This major study of Warwick's life and career is long overdue.