Anne Neville

As Professor Hicks admits in his preface, in attempting a biography of Anne Neville he has taken on a seemingly impossible task. Yet, with the very meagre sources available, the result is impressive. The book is aimed principally at the general reader, although academics will find some food for thought, particularly in Hicks's controversial representation of Anne's second marriage. Ricardians will be disappointed by a vehemently negative portrayal of Richard III, which includes the suggestion that Richard was ‘perhaps even a hunchback’. Inevitably the work involves considerable speculation, but Hicks is scrupulous in pointing out which elements are conjectured. Time and again he admits ‘we cannot really tell’. The book begins with an attempt to justify Anne's importance for who she was, if not for what she did, and then gives a detailed account of her family's place in late medieval England, providing a context which helps to make sense of her life. The third chapter examines the 1469–71 rebellions of her father, Warwick the Kingmaker, from Anne's perspective. This period included Anne's marriage to Prince Edward of Lancaster, and Hicks emphasises the great efforts taken by all parties to ensure that the proper dispensations were acquired. This marriage ended with Edward's death at Tewkesbury, and Hicks argues that Richard duke of Gloucester may have been more directly involved in killing the prince than is generally assumed. In the immediate aftermath of the failed Lancastrian readeption Hicks describes George duke of Clarence as Anne's ‘guardian angel’, but admits that ultimately their interests clashed. He claims that the fifteen-year-old Anne herself chose Richard of Gloucester as her second husband because he was the only man capable of securing her family's lands for her. In marrying without the proper dispensations, Hicks argues that both were aware that they were marrying illegally. His thesis that this was an ‘incestuous marriage’ is central to the biography and has already provoked vigorous denials from Ricardians. He also suggests that Anne was complicit in the unattractive land-grab at her mother's expense which accompanied this marriage. Thereafter, however, he argues that Anne's absence from historical records indicates that she ‘lacked even the normal influence that fifteenth-century ladies had with their husbands’. She played no obvious role in Richard's usurpation of his nephew's throne and her great failing as queen was that she produced only one child, a son who predeceased his parents. Her lack of children rendered her ‘past her sell-by date’. Under this heading Hicks argues that Richard intended to become a ‘serial incestor’ by marrying his niece, Elizabeth of York, and that Elizabeth was complicit in these plans. Hicks concludes with the claim that for Anne the shame of an impending divorce (and the decade of unmarried illicit fornication that that implied) was probably a greater trauma than all the tragic family deaths she had endured. Hicks has convincingly made his case that Anne Neville is a worthy subject for biography. His assessment of her life is entertaining, enlightening, comprehensive and contentious. While this book will certainly inspire further scholarship, it is hard to imagine anyone else producing a more effective biography in the foreseeable future

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