It is difficult to identify what exactly this last published study by the late Anne Sutton is trying to achieve or what audience it is seeking to address. The title, evoking perhaps echoes of the multi-volume History of the King’s Works of the 1960s (Brown et al Reference Brown, Colvin and Taylor1963), might, at least to some, suggest a sharply focused study of the king’s military building projects on the lines of those earlier, magisterial volumes. In fact, however, the book is simultaneously both broader and narrower than its main title might suggest. It is broader in the sense that it is not principally concerned with ‘work’ or ‘works’ in the sense of buildings, offering its readers instead an ambitiously conceived chronological account of royal defence measures in the north between 1471 and 1485, throwing in for good measure alongside this a series of regionally based chapters taking us on a tour d’horizon of Marcher topography and society. At the same time, the book is narrower in scope than at least its sub-title might suggest, in that it is concerned not so much with all three Yorkist kings as with Richard, duke of Gloucester, first in his capacity as warden of the Western March and later as king. The author’s aim, as she sets it out in her Preface, is deceptively simple: ‘it is to give information’, observing ‘as strictly as possible the chronology of events’, because, as she says later, ‘only that allows an accurate assessment of motives, though it remains impossible to guess how long a decision, let alone the document that recorded it, took in the making’ (p. 128). In other words, the book is one cast in narrative form; it is, as the author says, ‘an investigation of the prime duty of an English king: the defence of his realm and people’. Despite appearances, this is not a book about ‘works’ in the sense of royal building projects; it is about ‘work’, singular, in the sense of the day-to-day business of kingship. It is a political, social and diplomatic study, not an architectural one.

These potential misunderstandings aside, the unsuspecting reader, promised a straightforward account of events in the north under the Yorkist kings, might still be in for something of a shock. The problem is not so much that, as the author again warns in her Preface, ‘this is not a book for easy reading’ – the prose is certainly dense – it is rather that unexpected snares lie ahead. Embedded deep in the narrative, and easily overlooked in the mass of detail, is a committed attempt to exonerate Richard, both as warden of the March and king, from any wrongdoing in his policies in the north, and a determination on the author’s part to do battle with any scholar so bold to espouse a different view. In her general approach the author closely follows Cynthia Neville, whose work she greatly admires, in arguing that northern society was essentially peace-seeking, that adequate structures for the settlement of border disputes were to be found in ‘diets’ and march days and that cross-border raiding, at least in the period under review, was the exception rather than the norm. Sutton pictures Richard not as an aggressor in northern society, as others have, but keen to ‘offer good and reasonable government’, determined to work with the grain of local society, and successful for the most part in his efforts to maintain peace with the Scots. Sutton engages with the principal victim of her ire, A J Pollard, in the footnotes, accusing him of misreading documents, attaching insufficient importance to truce-making and generally thinking the worst of Richard; indeed, in her otherwise exemplary bibliography she fails even to cite his book by its full and correct title. Surprisingly perhaps, in the light of the wealth of detail accumulated in this volume, the author’s own readings of Richard are often vague and ill-supported. ‘It can be suggested’, she says, ‘that Richard was probably accorded an over-view’ of defence of the March, while ‘there is every sign that Richard and Henry Percy worked well together’ and ‘there is every reason to suppose that Henry Percy was a good manager’ (pp 164–5). Her own arguments are no less open to challenge than those of scholars whom she is so keen to criticise.

In the second part of her book, Sutton exchanges a chronological approach for a regional one, examining the Western, Middle and Eastern Marches in turn, according particular attention to such matters as defensive measures, the local economy and the composition of the gentry, and interspersing the general discussions with village-by-village gazetteers. The emphasis is very much on the structures of lordship and Richard of Gloucester’s engagement with these. Any reader hoping for a detailed discussion of castles, peel towers and other forms of fortification will probably go away disappointed. Although buildings are mentioned, they are not systematically analysed. Pevsner’s Buildings of England volumes are not even included in the bibliography.

The author promises her readers a follow-up volume in which, so she says, she will set out her views on the implications for northern society of Richard’s seizure of the throne. Whether this sequel will actually appear is not altogether clear in the light of the author’s death in June 2022.