David Saunders’ debut novel explores bloody history

The leader of the posse dismounts and within seconds has sliced them open ‘from crotch to chin’ neatly disembowelling them. Next come the women of the house...

It is May 1455, the start of the Wars of the Roses, and this is the bloodthirsty opening first page of David Saunders’ first foray into authorship.

It ends 150,000 words and 486 pages later with England still convulsed by the civil war between the houses of York and Lancaster.

It is a rivalry that continues to this day whenever a red-rosed son of Lancashire comes up against the white rose of Yorkshire. But without the bloodlust. Usually.

As you might imagine from that scene-setter, this is no academic treatise on the dynastic wars for the throne of England.

It is more a ripping yarn which places in historical context the bloody, macho times of the Plantagenet line which eventually closed the period in our history known as the Middle Ages.

It’s an era which concludes with the death of Richard III, hacked to death on Bosworth’s battlefield.

But in David’s life, Richard’s demise – our last monarch to die in battle – is a world of late-night and weekend typing away.

That pivotal moment in our history will not come until the third and final part in the trilogy which has consumed most of his waking, non-working, hours.

The Dreams of Kings might be described by David as an entirely self-contained historical novel, but what his intricately-researched book does is explain neatly one of the most confusing periods of our history and one of which many readers might not be aware, or have forgotten about completely.