Book Review: "Edward IV: The Summer King" by A.J Pollard

As you probably already know (and I have said this so many times now it is really becoming tedious even for me), I am reading one book about every single king and queen of England from Edward the Confessor all the way to our own times. So far, I have read a book by Edward the Confessor, William I, William II, Henry I, Stephen, Matilda, Henry II, Richard I, John, Henry III, Edward I, Edward II, Edward III, Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI and now, finally I am reading a book about Edward IV entitled Edward IV: The Summer King by A.J Pollard. Edward IV is a king I know a fair bit about having studied the Tudors and the Wars of the Roses ad nauseam at schools in the past.

This book starts off with a little word of reference from the Shakespeare play Richard III, which begins with the celebration of the restoration of Edward IV as the King of England when Henry VI is deposed for a second time in 1471. In fact, the entire introduction to the book is dedicated to looking at why Shakespeare never chose to give Edward IV his own play and where his reign actually is in the cycle of the Wars of the Roses. As we Shakespeare fans know, it is in between the final part to Henry VI and the start of Richard III. We get a little bit of an analysis of chroniclers and artists who worked to put Edward IV into the history books nice and somewhat accurately. I like this introduction because of how clear it remains in the fact that we cannot be ever completely sure about how accurate thigns are, but we definitely know who produced these works and why.

Edward IV was a 'son of York' and almost immediately in the book, we are introduced to him through his deposition of Henry VI, twice in fact. We get straight into the whole Wars of the Roses aspect and dig deep into the politics which placed Edward IV on the throne of England. To be honest, when I first studied this in school, I found the whole reasoning a bit sketchy and the claims to the throne a little shaky at best. But, anyways, that is for another time. For now, Edward IV was becoming king and that was the only thing that seemed to matter. For all cases, Edward IV was a king who had all of his priorities in order - except when it came to which woman he would marry.

Edward IV famously married the common woman, Elizabeth Woodville and made all of her brothers earls and landowners of some kind. In the play Richard III, Elizabeth Woodville's brother, the Earl Rivers, is famously executed and gives that little speech about meeting in heaven with his friends. In the film of 1995 though, he dies by getting stabbed and is portrayed by Robert Downey Jr. I don't know how I feel about that.

Anyways, back on to the book.

As we move through Edward IV's reign, we realise that things are not as sturdy as they seem. From every angle there seems to be some kind of brutal attack, someone somewhere wants the throne of England and there is a woman called Margaret Beaufort who isn't going to be taken down without a fight. Edward IV's character was that of a cross between a war lord and a storybook king a la Richard I. But, he was no match for the she-wolf that was Margaret Beaufort and her want for power. Ultimately, it is everything that isn't sturdy about his reign from the very beginning that allows Edward IV to fall from grace and die.

At the age of 40, it is unclear as to how Edward IV died and everything from poisoning to a stroke has been suggested. The book does an excellent job at keeping the tempo of Edward IV's reign though and it makes massive references to how Shakespeare's plays show it at as bridge between the two small masses of propaganda that we have in entire play formats: Henry VI and Richard III.