What if Henry Tudor had been a handsome, charismatic challenger….?

    As supporters of Richard III, we find it only too easy to dislike Henry VII. Not only did the churl defeat and kill Richard (not even through his own martial endeavours but through treachery!) but his looks mean we wouldn’t trust him an inch. He looks cold, calculating, shifty and downright untrustworthy, nor…

What a difference a daub makes….

Where Richard III is concerned, his physical appearance is all important. His enemies alter his portraits to give him an evil, scheming aspect that suits their agenda. His friends prefer more flattering portraits that show him as he really was. There is one portrait in the National Portrait Gallery (above) that is perhaps the most…

Was Edward the Confessor an albino….?

  Researching for my writing takes me all over the place … and to numerous figures from the past. This time, needing to know the attitude of medieval people to albinism, I was led to our long-revered medieval monarch and saint, Edward the Confessor. Now I’ll be the first to admit to not knowing a…

Richard III’s portrait is on the move….

From 8 June – 22 September 2019, Richard’s NPG portrait is on its travels to the New Walk Museum & Art Gallery, Leicester. If you wander around the NPG site, you’ll find more about their portraits of Richard. Twenty-six in all. But you’ll also find the following: “Richard III was the last Yorkist king of England.…

A fleeting trick of the eye….

Occasionally, an image glimpsed quickly on TV appears to be something it is not. This happened to me when I first saw the TV trailer for the series Catching History’s Criminals: the Forensics Story on the Yesterday channel. Being inured to the old, old propaganda that Richard III was the first criminal in all Creation,…

A question of age

Drifting in and out of various history groups on the net, a very strange thing has become apparent. There are some out there who truly believe  Richard III’s death was ‘the end of the Middle Ages’ and that he stood in the way of the wonderful, burgeoning Renaissance like some great big dinosaur with both…

Enigmatic signs and messages in a portrait of Richard III….

Everyone knows about Leslau and his theories concerning the Hans Holbein portrait of Sir Thomas More and his family. In Leslau’s opinion, the portrait reveals much about the fates of the “Princes in the Tower”. Another Holbein painting, “The Ambassadors” is also filled with secret messages. Or so it is said. I cannot argue one…

STILL LOOKING FOR RICHARD

Introduction According to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, the noun Ricardianism means ‘support for or advocacy of Richard III’. Even though I have been a supporter of king Richard III for almost six decades, I am reluctant to describe myself as a Ricardian since it implies a narrow interest in one man. I prefer to…

The Art of Frances Quinn

For over five hundred years, Richard the Third has been the subject of much good and bad art.  Perhaps the most famous image is the National Portrait Gallery portrait which hangs in a prominent spot (after years of being shunted into a busy stairwell at the entryway) and has for many years intrigued casual visitors…

First he scowls, then he smiles….

Oh, the wonder of computers. They can impart such power, even to making Richard III show his true colours at last, by smiling from his hitherto moody portrait. The portrait of him held by the Society of Antiquaries is believed to be the earliest of the few portraits that still survive of Richard. All of…