'So violent and motley was life that it bore the mixed smell of blood and of roses.' Helen Castor quotes Johan Huizinga's description of the waning of the Middle Ages at the very end of her book, with something approaching a denial of its relevance to her own account of the same period. 'Blood and roses' suggests violence and sex - or at least violence and sentimentality. The roses most relevant to the story are in fact those of York and Lancaster, whose surges of hostility wrecked almost every one of the Paston family's schemes for advancement just as they were coming to fruition. The Pastons managed to avoid most of the bloodshed directly associated with the civil war, but there was plenty of violence at a local level, and although no members of the family were killed it was more luck than circumstance that preserved them; a well-padded doublet proved useful even on the streets of Norwich. And the sentimentality, if not the sex, largely came second to economic considerations.

LRB 4 August 2005 | PDF Download