[DISCLOSURE NOTICE: I corresponded with the author during his research for this book, and I receive an acknowledgement at the start of the book. I did not pay for my copy, but received it as a thank you.]
Dr David Grummitt has published three books on the Wars of the Roses this year. The first one was reviewed here (as part of my Annotated Bibliography) and the second here. These were both very good, the former as the primer that every undergraduate should read - and also anyone else who cares about what actual historians think about the period - and the latter as the first full academic study of how the wars were fought. Alas for the second book it was a OUP hardback, published at an astronomic cost. The good news is that it has nearly sold out, so a paperback is a possibility now.
I don't know about the reshaping bit. In respect of most of the battles/encounters covered by the book it doesn't so much "reshape" them as take a wrecking ball to the accepted understanding and leaving it as an unsightly pile of rubble by the road side. This book not only tells you that everything you thought you knew is wrong, but exactly where the errors came from and who is to blame.
Some people aren't going to be happy. Luckily some of them have been dead for quite a long while, so they won't be complaining.
The aim of the book is laid out clearly in the "Introduction", and it is similar to that of Malcolm Wanklyn's superb "Decisive Battles of the English Civil War" (which is referenced in this section). The intention is to go back to the original contemporary sources, stripping away all the accumulated gloss added by historian over the years from Hall in the 15th century onwards whilst explaining why we think what we do and why a lot of it is probably incorrect. Saying what didn't happen is possibly the easier task, and there's a lot of "we don't know" in the book. There is also only one battle map, and that is for 1st St Albans. Grummitt is clear we often don't know exactly where the battles were fought, and even if we do, we don't know where most of the leaders were and we don't have good numbers for those taking part. For 1st St Albans we do know, because we have the medieval street plan and we know who attacked down what lanes and where people were injured an killed. Otherwise we get one general map showing the road network**, some campaign maps, and the scatter map of archaeological finds at Towton. Like Wanklyn's book, this is a book about battles written by an academic historian, rather than an enthusiastic amateur. That means it is thorough and insightful and all its conclusions are backed by evidence and the most recent research. He has not felt the need to guess at what happened so he can place armies on a map. This will irritate wargamers who absolutely want someone to tell them precisely who was there and where they stood. The book goes part way there - it includes a detailed appendix for each battle showing what sources tell us which individuals were present - but it won't tell you exactly where they fought, for the most part.
The battles all get a chapter to themselves, pretty much, and there is a welcome chapter about what was going on in Calais and Ireland in 1459/60, something that is usually only dealt with in a perfunctory style. Of the battles discussed the major makeovers are given to 2nd St Albans (drawing partly on Penny Tucker's excellent article on the Battlefield Trust website), "Wakefield" (following the work of Paul Lindsay Dawson in his recent biography of Richard, Duke of York) and Palm Sunday Field (which uses Tim Sutherland's "Killing Time", along with much new otherwise unpublished research).
This book, and the two following volumes, should become the touchstone for anyone writing a history of the period going forwards. Long established books, such as those by Haigh and Boardman should be consigned to the "interesting we used to think that" shelf, along with A H Burne's "Battlefields of England", although there will no doubt still be those who cling to the various myths either as a form of historical comfort blanket or an innate laziness.
Buy this book and prioritise reading it. It is so important that if you are interested in the period you can't even begin to get involved in any discussion about the military history if you haven't read it.
*Number one in this series was Mike Ingram's book on Richard III & Bosworth, which I reckon is still the best book about the campaign and battle.
** This is one of the areas I take issue with David. He thinks armies come to Northampton because it is near Watling Street. This ignores the network of non-Roman roads in the area which had Northampton at its centre.
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