Desmond Eric Christopher Seward (22 May 1935 – 3 April 2022) was an Anglo-Irish popular historian and the author of many books, including biographies of Henry IV of France, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Marie Antoinette, Empress Eugénie and Napoleon's family.
The Hundred Years War: The English in France 1337–1453 (1978) was rated "a well written narrative, beautifully illustrated, and which takes into account most recent research.
The New Yorker noted that "Mr Seward shows us all the famous sights of those roaring times [...] and illuminates them with an easy scholarship, a nice sense of detail [...] and a most agreeable clarity of style."
Members of the Richard III Society took issue with Seward's description of the king as "a peculiarly grim young English precursor of Machiavelli's Prince".
Seward argues that the savage way in which Richard was hacked to death demonstrates how much he was hated and that, with the proof of a deformity, this strengthens the case for Shakespeare's portrait being not so far from the truth.
Seward, a conservative Roman Catholic, was strongly criticised by Frank McLynn in The Independent for credulity in endorsing such religious phenomena as the "sun dancing" spectacle at Fátima in Portugal and elsewhere.