Some Touch of Pity

1483.

Richard, Duke of Gloucester, returns home a hero, victorious over the invading Scots…

As his brother the King’s Lieutenant General in the north, Richard spends his days repelling the invading Scots before coming home to his adoring family.

The love between Richard and his wife Anne is deep and abiding, incomprehensible to any but themselves; his thoughtful and devoted care for his young wife, and hers for him, is one of the great love-stories of history.

Richard and Anne live for each other — and for their only child, Edward. In this life, they are happy, with no wish for their situation to change.

Richard’s devotion to King Edward IV, as king and kin, ensures he does his duty to the best of his ability and beyond, but he has little ambition for himself.

But their quiet happiness is shattered by the death of the king, which leaves the country with only a child as heir to the throne.

One of King Edward’s final acts is to make Richard Protector of England, to guide and rule until the child king is grown.

This catapults him into a wary game of power and treachery and forces Richard to make some of the most difficult decisions of his life.

Betrayal dogs Richard’s heels from his brother’s untimely death until his own final moments on the Battle of Bosworth’s blood-soaked field.

He is called a murderer of children, an incestuous lecher, a power-hungry tyrant.

The salacious fabrications spread by his enemies threaten to elide the strength of Richard’s loyalty and devotion to crown, country, and family.

His love for his wife and unending anguish at her death, and the burden of bearing the consequences of his decisions, wear on him until, by the time the final battle arrives, he already wears the countenance of a corpse.

Best remembered as the evil, deformed usurper king in William Shakespeare’s Richard III, and more recently returned to the public imagination as a result of the discovery of his body, Richard, Duke of Gloucester and King of England, is one of the most reviled of England’s monarchs. In this spell-binding novel, Rhoda Edwards depicts a complex, tragic man far removed from the popular legend of the blood-thirsty tyrant, whose actions and decisions are driven by the desire to do good — and by love.

‘The most moving novel about Richard that I have ever read.’ — Rosemary Sutcliff

‘An excellent book’ —The Times

‘The depth of the research and her love for her subject show through on every page…a compelling, moving and sometimes haunting novel’ —The Times Literary Supplement

Some Touch of Pity won the Yorkshire Post’s Best First Work Award in 1976.

Rhoda Edwards is also the author of Fortune’s Wheel, which likewise focuses on Richard of Gloucester.

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