The Wars of the Roses: Peace and Conflict in Fifteenth-Century England

xv, 274 pp. Includes black-and-white illustrations. It was the period when the French beat the English and the English fought among themselves. Traditional historians have glossed over it, considering it the time that wrecked Britain's military greatness. But Gillingham elegantly separates myth from reality, arguing that, paradoxically, the wars actually proved how peaceful the country was.