Much as I love Shakespeare's Richard III, I also love to see Richard portrayed more positively. Philippa Gregory's latest in her "Cousin's War" series, The Kingmaker's Daughter (2012)
I think this is the first of Gregory's works that I've read, and I was quite favorably impressed. I am not a particular scholar of the era, but I know the basics, and her research seems sound to me. She includes a five-page bibliography of resources in case anyone feels like checking her work. Everything I casually checked was accurate or accepted as possible.
Anne's story, unfortunately, is a fairly depressing one: married at fourteen to the ill-fated Prince Edward, son of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou; widowed at fifteen; imprisoned; married to Richard; one surviving child; two years as queen to the embattled Richard, during which reign their son dies; then dying herself at twenty-eight only a few months before Richard is killed by the future Henry VII. All this I knew before. But Gregory manages to bring alive not only Anne herself but the members of her family whose history I'd never thought much about: Richard Neville, a.k.a. the Kingmaker, 16th Earl of Warwick, whose machinations and shifting loyalties drove much of the latter part of the Wars of the Roses; Anne Beauchamp, her mother, a great heiress in her own right; and her older sister Isabel, married to Richard's older brother George, Duke of Clarence, famously said to have been drowned in a butt of malmsey.
(2010),
I go to the opposite extreme: extreme caving. As adventure-exploration goes, it is actually quite similar to extreme mountaineering: weeks spent isolated in cold, wet environments with complicated technical equipment and a dozen obvious ways to die. Even the most minor of injuries can trap a caver; rescue is near-impossible at the depths to which these "supercave" explorers routinely descend. There are plenty of high cliffs, even in the greatest depths, so the climbing equipment and danger of falling are quite similar. Cavers, like climbers, establish a series of camps with supplies as they move deeper into the cave. Even the term "Sherpa" has been adopted for the lower-ranking cavers who
spend all their time ferrying supplies for the more experienced
explorers. The personalities can be equally extreme. And, as in mountaineering, getting to the destination is only half the battle. Getting back is even worse.
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