THE FOLIO SOCIETY

The Wars of the Roses were stormy times, and most of the contemporary material that survives is official rather than personal. So 'Original Letters written during the reigns of Henry VI, Edward IV and Richard III' have an immediate fascination.

This remarkable correspondence of more than 1,000 letters, written between 1420 and 1500 and spanning three generations, first surfaced in 1787. The Pastons were a well-to-do Norfolk family and, though not prominent politically, they were inevitably touched by the fortunes of kings. John Paston the second, for example, was a courtier to King Edward IV, but fought against him in 1471 and had to sue for pardon; Margaret, wife of John the first, saw no less than three violent attacks against the family's property, and once 'a riotous people to the number of a thousand persons mined down the wall of the chamber and bore her out at the gates'.

But the letters are most important as an intimate portrait of family life in a long-past generation. The characters are rounded - Margaret chides her absent husband; Margery insists on marrying her lover although he is 'in trade'; John the second, who loves books and tournaments, also has a reputation as 'the best chaser of gentlewomen'. Richard Barber's skilful editing makes this a marvellously accessible tale of family survival in an England torn by civil war.

'I heard never say of so much robbery and manslaught in this country as is now within a little time. And as for gathering of money, I never saw a worse season' (Margaret Paston to her husband)