Bradford University lecturer Dr Christopher Knusel has helped produce a new chapter for a book about the War of the Roses.

The book Blood Red Roses is based on the findings from a mass grave in Yorkshire which gave academics and historians a new insight into one of the bloodiest battles ever seen on English soil.

Bradford University has an international reputation in paleopathology – using skeletal remains to discover information about how a person died, how healthy they were, what they ate and where they lived.

Its academics played a key role in examining the findings from a mass grave in Towton, near Tadcaster, where the bodies of 38 soldiers from the War of the Roses were recovered.

Last week archaeology experts from 40 countries around the world, flocked to Yorkshire for a two-week course looking at Bradford University's findings.

Dr Knusel demonstrated how trauma injuries on the bone showed how the soldiers were injured in hand-to-hand combat with hand held weapons.

His audience was a gathering of archaeologists and forensic scientists from as far afield as Egypt, Australia and Argentina but now the Bradford University academic hopes the same findings can help to get schoolchildren excited by history through a new chapter in his book.

The War of the Roses between 1455 and 1487 were a series of civil wars fought between supporters of the Lancastrian King Henry VI and Richard Duke of York.

Bradford University's research centres around the battle of Towton on Palm Sunday in 1461, where an estimated 28,000 people were killed. Richard's eldest son was crowned King Edward IV after the Yorkists' crushing victory at Towton.

Dr Knusel said: "The trauma injuries we found told us something new about the way the war was fought. There was an idea that there was a code of chivalry between nobles. That anyone noble caught would be held captive and ransomed back.

"But what we found is that the fighting was brutal and fought face to face. The injuries people suffered were from hand held weapons and were sometimes excessive beyond what it would have taken to kill someone.

"It also gave us an idea of what a medieval rout must have been like. A lot of the injuries we encountered were obviously inflicted from horseback with men on the ground who have been chased down.

"We do not believe the soldiers were nobles but they were from noble households. Their bones also show that these men which were bigger and broader than the average medieval man. This could be because they were trained from a young age or that they were chosen because of their strength.

"According to chroniclers there were believed to be 100,000 people involved which would have made them the biggest armies ever seen at the time and 28,000 people were believed to have been killed and we have 38 of them."

Dr Knusel said the findings not only helped historians to learn about the tactics, weaponry and armour used on the day but also provided a more personal insight into the conflict which he said helped young people to relate to the subject as more than just dates in a text book.

Dr Knusel said: "You see the suffering these people faced. We are able to provide people with lots of individual experiences which these soldiers had before their lives came to an end at Towton."