Written by Conn Iggulden in four parts, just finished reading part two ( it’s called Trinity).
This excerpt is amazing….
The younger Richard Neville made an extraordinarily fortunate marriage to Anne Beau-champ, daughter of the Earl of Warwick. When the earl died, his son Henry became earl and then died at only twenty-three, leaving a three-year-old daughter who also died.
The rights to the title then passed to Anne - and to her husband, Richard Neville. At the age of barely twenty-one, he became Earl of Warwick, Newburgh and Aumarle, Baron of Elmley and Hanslape, Lord of Glamorgan and Morgannoc. His new estates were these: land in South Wales and Herefordshire including the castles of Cardiff, Neath, Caerphilly, Llantrussant, Seyntweonard, Ewyas Lacy, Castle-Dinas, Snodhill, Whitchurch and Maud's Castle. Caerphilly alone was a fortress to resist ten thousand men. In Gloucestershire, another seven wealthy manors. In Worcestershire, three great manors, the castle of Elmley and twenty-four other manors. In Warwick-shire, besides the incredible castle and town itself, nine more manors, including Tamworth. In Oxfordshire, five manors as well as lands in Kent, Hampshire, Sussex, Essex, Hertfordshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Berkshire, Wilt-shire, Somerset, Devon, Cornwall, Northampton, Stafford, Cambridge, Rutland and Nottingham - another forty-eight manors in all. In the distant north, just one possession: Barnard's Castle on the Tees. So: twelve major castles, a hundred and forty-three manors, from the border of Scotland to Devon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Neville,_16th_Earl_of_Warwick
Brilliant book too.
Steve