I don’t know about you, but I absolutely LOVE the Olympics!! Doesn’t matter, summer, winter, whenever the Olympics are on I am glued to my tv for two weeks soaking in the inspirational stories of the athletes and cheering on the underdogs who come out of nowhere to say, “Hey world, I’m here to win!” Given that this is the case, it is fair to say that my reading time has taken a serious hit over the past two weeks and I feel my lead in the Book War dwindling…very quickly.
That being said, I have been reading a little and I recently finished another historical fiction novel by Judith Arnopp. This one is called, A Song of Sixpence: The Story of Elizabeth of York and Perkin Warbeck. If you are familiar with the history of the War of the Roses in England you may know about the mysterious disappearance of the two sons of King Edward IV from the Tower of London. To this day we do not know what happened to these two young boys after King Edward IV died and they were taken to the Tower for ‘their own protection’ and then disappeared from all of the records. Some argue that their uncle, King Richard III (yes, the one they recently found buried under a parking lot in England) had them murdered, while others believe one or both escaped the Tower and came back later to claim their right to be King, still others think perhaps they died of malnutrition, horrible living conditions, and loneliness in the Tower. The point is we really do not know what happened to the boys and that is the basis of Arnopp’s book, A Song of Sixpence.
Arnopp creates a fictional account of the life of Perkin Warbeck as the younger of the two missing princes, Richard. While the story of Richard is almost entirely fictional, Arnopp utilizes both fact and fiction to tell the story of his older sister, Elizabeth of York as she struggles between loyalty to her husband, the first Tudor King, Henry VII and her familial feelings and the potential that Perkin Warbeck may in fact be her brother Richard returning to England to reclaim his right to be king.
This book is both well written and researched which makes her fictional story that much more believable which I found compelling, especially since the fate of the princes remains a mystery. Who knows?! Maybe Perkin Warbeck was in fact, Prince Richard! Anyway…a good read for those who like historical fiction and/or English history.
Read on my friends.