Brian Wainwright "How I Wish I Had Written That" Award for 2019

The coveted and prestigious Brian Wainwright "How I Wish I Had Written That" Award for 2019 goes to the late, great and much lamented Edith Pargeter.

In this scene from A Bloody Field By Shrewsbury, Thomas Percy, Earl of Worcester, is addressing that toad, Bolingbroke...

"My lord of Lancaster, there is nothing now your vengeance can do to me, nothing you can take from me that I will not gladly part with. But I tell you this to your face, you do ill to use such words as traitor and treason to me, or to him that's dead in his splendour. What have we done that you have not taught us before? We took arms for our rights against wrongs inflicted by an unjust king. So did you! We did our endeavour to curb his actions and take from his his crown. So did you! If we are traitors, so were you when you struck at Richard. Did we go back on an oath of allegiance? So did you! There is nothing we have now done against the crown that you did not commit against it four years ago. Hold up the mirror of treason before you, and see your own face! And more - for you do things we have not done, and never thought to do. It was in fair fight in the field, and far outnumbered, that Harry Percy set out to take your life, Henry of Lancaster, man to man, not by proxy in a prison cell, fifteen days starving to death!"

A Bloody Field by Shrewsbury, Edith Pargeter, page 397.