Photography. Leicester's statue of Richard III was so much easier to photograph before they moved it from the park! Among the trees and flowers down by the river the light was kind, and the scene changed all the time. It's appropriate where it now is, but its surroundings are harsh, and it could hardly have been better placed for bad light if someone … Continue reading Fortune and victory sit on thy helm!
At the end of Shakespeare's Richard III, the Earl of Richmond, now effectively king Henry VII, makes a short speech from the battlefield. Looking around at the dead, he says: “Inter their bodies as becomes their births.” Now, after 530 years, that has been done for his royal opponent at Bosworth. The whole thing was … Continue reading As became his birth
The Leicester Cathedral Quarter Partnership Board has published a provisional timetable for the reburial of Richard III’s remains in March next year. Here is what it adds up to. We really haven’t seen anything like this before! Sunday March 22 2015 [1] 12.00 Hearse departs from University of Leicester, to [2] Fenn Lane Farm … Continue reading Reburying Richard
Forensic archaeology at its best – if perhaps not entirely welcome to everyone. We are now able to read exactly what Richard III’s skeleton tells us about his traumatic death. The description of the wounds, in a multi-authored paper published in the Lancet, changes little of what has already been told (so my summary in … Continue reading Richard III’s death – the grim details
Out today is the fourth peer-reviewed article deriving from the search for Richard III’s grave. It focuses on the king’s bones and teeth, specifically what a few of them might tell us about where he lived at different times in his life, and how his diet changed. And once again, the scientific release occurs on the … Continue reading Richard III’s teeth and bones: why we didn’t know it all before
You might notice a bit of a theme going on here. First Stonehenge opens a visitor centre that is roundly trashed by the press (and subsequently praised by their travel journalists). Then the British Museum’s new extension and Vikings exhibition is labelled boring – and attracts huge numbers of visitors. Now we have a third archaeological … Continue reading What makes the new Richard III Visitor Centre “insulting”?
There’s an entertaining piece about Richard III in the new BBC History magazine, by Chris Skidmore (which also contains a nice review of my book, by Francis Pryor). Was he thinking of Horrible Histories? One of the TV series’ great features was a Measly Middle Ages pop ballad parody called The Truth About Richard III. … Continue reading A nice guy
I’m going to post some photos I took yesterday on a perfect day on the Kennet & Avon canal. The day before, I gave my first Richard III talk, at the National Portrait Gallery (to a full house, after which we ran out of copies of my book during the signing session…). I’d prepared for … Continue reading A canal walk, a church and a bit of Wolf Hall
So Skeleton 1 will be buried back in Leicester next spring. It will be some two and half years since it was dug up, and two since it was identified as the remains of an English king. The exhumation licence proposed in effect that reburial would occur by October 3 2012 (“within 4 weeks”). Extensions … Continue reading Leicester celebrates its king
Richard III's remains to be reburied in Leicester. More on Sunday (I have a magazine to get to the printer...)
Mike Pitts – Digging Deeper 