Perhaps all the review you need of this book comes on page 4 of the Introduction: "One historian has written in an introduction to his book, 'An author owes it to his readers to explain what his book is about and why it was written.' I could not agree less."

I'm tempted to paraphrase as, "--- off, reader, I don't care about you."

It seems pretty clear from the Introduction (not just the above sentences, but the whole chapter) that Colin Richmond's previous books, including the first book in this series on the Paston Family, have fared poorly at the hands of reviewers, and he is striking back. It is truly unfortunate that Richmond didn't listen, because this book has real problems. It is littered with digressions, many of them incomprehensibly obscure. It is so badly written that it is often impossible to construe the meaning of sentences. (Those two complaints are likely related, but they are true both separately and in combination.) And, of course, it is almost always impossible to figure out what Richmond is talking about. The whole thing is an internal argument that has somehow found its way into hardcovers.

Even the title is somewhat deceptive, because Richmond talks about how this is really William Worchester's book. That's not really true; it's the Pastons' book, with Worcester a primary witness to what happened. But it is an example about how Richmond's focus keeps changing.

This failure to make sense is truly unfortunate, because Richmond has genuinely made new discoveries, mostly (I think) by comparing data from the Paston Letters with other sources such as the Fastolf Papers and Worcester's writings. He gets cited in other works. But probably not as much as he deserves. He's just too hard to understand.

Let's hope he understands the reviews before he writes his next book -- and finds a ghostwriter. ( )