Warwick the Kingmaker was a fifteenth-century celebrity; a military hero, self-publicist and populist. For twelve years, he was the arbiter of English politics, not hesitating to set up and put down kings. In the dominant strand of recent English historical writing, Warwick is condemned as a man who hindered the development of the modern state, and yet in earlier centuries he was admired as an exemplar of true nobility who defied the centralising tendencies of the crown. A. J. Pollard offers a fresh assessment, to which neither approach is entirely appropriate, of the man whose nickname has become synonymous with power broking.
