In her new book, Richard III Unspun, Annette Carson continues to shine a spotlight on the months following the death of Edward IV, a time during which centuries of spin have painted his actions as motivated by a grab for the throne. In previous books and talks, citing evidence in contemporary documents, she has demonstrated that he was actually forced into reacting, with legitimate and long-standing legal powers, to a series of unanticipated moves by hostile actors. Annette’s latest talk is designed to bring these investigations to life by illustrating the ‘how, when and why’ of two well-recorded incidents: the arrests at Stony Stratford, and the Hastings conspiracy. These events are often taken together and viewed as perplexing by Ricardians. But each incident will be shown to be the culmination of cynical plans to oust Richard from his position in the government, carried out by different factions who faced being toppled from their easy lives of corruption and venality.

Annette Carson is a non-fiction writer with a preference for history and biography. She has written on the history of aviation and contributed on the subject in Encyclopaedia Britannica. In 2001 she published an acclaimed biography of the late giant of the guitar, Jeff Beck. She is well known to Ricardians for her book Richard III: The Maligned King (first published 2008, updated in 2023 with an extra chapter on the reappearance of the princes), and she was a member of the team led by Philippa Langley that found his grave in 2012. 

Richard III Unspun is her sixth Ricardian book, the last one being a new and accurate translation of the important 1483 report by Domenico Mancini, placing it within the context of modern research. In 2021–2023 she set aside her own work to produce Dr Arthur Kincaid’s History of King Richard the Third (1619) by Sir George Buc, working from Arthur’s files during his last illness.

Arthur applauded her book on Richard as Lord Protector and High Constable as ‘an absolutely vital book for Ricardian studies’, and wrote of her analysis of the Stony Stratford incident that it ‘confirms my sense that you are the most important writer on Richard today. It (along with Protector and Constable) makes absolute sense of something previously muddled and worrying’.