The first years of my life are of no imprtance. At the age of nine, I was packed off to a preparatory school in the South of England, and for the next four years led the usual life of a preparatory-school boy. I indulged in midnight feasts and was periodically beaten.

The Wars of the Roses…were one of the most confused and confusing chapters of English history; in which each usurper, as soon as he had gained the throne, found himself having to defend it against the next; in which so many members of the feuding families were closely inter-related; in which a man could be both hero and villain at one and the same time… One by one, the royal houses of England destroyed each other and themselves.

To advance, however far, is profitless unless the ground gained can be consolidated, or the momentum sustained.