Medieval Knight I came to English history through Philippa Gregory. Most of us did. The White Queen was the book that opened the door to the Wars of the Roses for me. After that I went looking for everything I could find on the period, and especially on Warwick. The chronicles, the academic histories, the letters that survived. Sharon Kay Penman got me the rest of the way. The Sunne in Splendour is still the book I measure myself against. Once you start chasing Warwick, you d

Most readers meet Richard Neville at the end. The Kingmaker's Spy meets him at the beginning, and introduces the woman who was already there.

Richard Neville was a hero in his own time. He was very popular, a strategist, a plotter, a winner, and a loser, but he never gave up. He was Warwick, the Kingmaker. I wanted to write about him briefly as I have based my hero on him. Warwick was born to one of the most powerful families in England at the time, the Nevilles. He "inherited" his title, Earl of Warwick, from his wedding to Anne Beauchamp in 1449. Warwick's marriage made him even more powerful as it allied him wit