The Wars of the Roses were a bitter and bloody dispute between the rival
Plantagenet Houses of York and Lancaster. Only one man, Jasper Tudor,
the Lancastrian half-brother to Henry VI, fought from the first battle
at St Albans in 1455 to the last at Stoke Field in 1487 and lived to
forge a new dynasty - the Tudors. Fighting the Yorkists, rallying the
Lancastrians and spending years in exile with his nephew, the future
first Tudor monarch, Henry VII, Jasper was the mainspring for continued
Lancastrian defiance. He was twenty-four years old in his first battle
and fifty-three when he won at Bosworth Field in 1485. Now he could
style himself 'the high and mighty prince, Jasper, brother and uncle of
kings, duke of Bedford and earl of Pembroke'. Without the heroic Jasper
Tudor there could have been no Tudor dynasty. This is the first
biography of the real 'kingmaker' of British history.