In the teeth of the evidence

Here, a little-known television journalist-historian named Dominic Selwood disputes the identity of Richard III’s remains, despite the mtDNA match with collateral descendants in Canada and Australia, their height, age of death, era of death, scoliosis, battle injuries, region of origin and the location of his original burial at the choir of the Greyfriars. In fact…

How to cast a “Richard III”

Here is a Guardian article about Arthur Hughes, who qualifies for the role in that he is male, disabled (in a subtle way) and was only thirty when chosen by the Royal Shakespeare Company, as was Richard III in June 1483 when chosen by the Three Estates. He isn’t an octogenarian, a woman or pretending…

Richard III’s many daughters….

  Fake news. Ah yes. We regard this as a modern curse, but, of course, it goes back through the centuries. Probably ever since the humans in one cave fell out with the humans in another. Lies…erm, fake news…soon circulated. And if there was one King of England about whom there is fake news in…

Lucy Worsley “proves” Richard III murdered his nephews….!

  Episode 3 of Lucy Worsley‘s latest TV series is about The Princes in the Tower, and from the outset it’s clear that Lucy is Lady Dracula, because she goes for Richard III’s jugular at every opportunity. The thought that he might be innocent doesn’t seem to occur to her because she’s utterly convinced of…

The Renaissance, wedding dresses….and Robert de Vere….

  Well, I wasn’t looking for observations on when the Renaissance commenced, rather was I trying to find information on the wedding of Robert de Vere, Duke of Ireland, Marquess of Dublin, and 9th Earl of Oxford KG. The wording of my Google search brought up a site in which I found the following: “….During…

Sharon Kay Penman-A Tribute

Ask many Ricardians how they got their first glimpse of a non-Shakespearean Richard III, and many will tell you it was one of two novels—Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey or The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman. Sadly, on January 22, Sharon Penman, who continued to be a great supporter of Richard’s cause…

PRINCESS EUGENIE & QUEEN CLAUDE: two royal ladies who battled the same condition

  The Palace has recently announced that Princess Eugenie of York and her husband Jack Brooksbank are expecting their first baby. Eugenie of course quite famously showed off the scar from her scoliosis surgery when she got married in a backless wedding dress in 2018. She had idiopathic adolescent onset scoliosis, like Richard III, and…

Richard III and Harold II

We all know that Richard is directly descended from William the Conqueror, who is his eleven times great grandfather. Here is Richard’s pedigree to William in three parts – follow the yellow dots left to right. (N.B. the first few generations have the yellow combined with red and blue which lead to other ancestors). But…

Now Richard’s bones “suggest….[he] was a control freak who had a friendly face”….!

Well, for idiotic claims, this one about takes the biscuit! How on earth can the examination of Richard III’s centuries-old remains tell anyone he was a control freak? Or that he was friendly? Yes, a reconstruction from his skull has proved he was good-looking, but that’s not the same as “friendly”. Mind you, as medieval…

Things learned about most of our 15th-century kings….

The new year of 2020 commenced with this article dropping into my inbox. It’s an interesting list, each entry backed by an explanation, but I’ve limited my comments to the monarchs of the 15th century. The thought of Henry VI requiring a sex coach is rather boggling, I have to say, but then he was…