
The War of the Roses turned England upside down. Between 1455 & 1485 four kings lost their thrones more than forty noblemen lost their lives on the battlefield or their heads on the block & thousands of the men who followed them met violent deaths. Yet almost nothing is known about the thoughts & feelings of the people who lived through this bloody conflict. Almost nothing but not quite. As they made their way in a disintegrating world a Norfolk family called the Pastons were writing letters
- about politics about business about shopping about love & about each other. 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 & intensely human story of how one family survived one of the most tempestuous periods in English history.