When Henry Tudor was crowned King Henry VII in 1485 his mother, Margaret Beaufort (1443–1509), became the most powerful woman in England. Margaret was 13 years old when Henry was born, shortly after the death of her husband, Edmund Tudor, and in the midst of war. It was an inauspicious beginning but her ambition, skill and determination won through to found a dynasty. Nicola Tallis’s new biography dispels the myths about Margaret and shows her life to be more remarkable than the many fictions it has inspired.