Loyaulté me Lie [Loyalty Binds Me] was the motto of Richard III, and I think I have got stuck in a bizarre time-warp because of him!
Last month, we took Steph and Mark to Bosworth Battlefield and looked at all that stuff about Richard III.
Then I showed the Willows Three local sites like Bradgate House and Kirby Castle – both significant in R3’s story.
Then I read the last of my Josephine Tey Collection – Daughter Of Time – which is all about Richard III
And at Andy’s birthday party on Saturday evening, I found myself sitting with a someone who is a history buff, who told me even more about Richard III, at great length and in surprising detail. “Were you actually there?” I found myself asking at one point!
And Radio 4 Extra has been re-broadcasting Vivat Rex [interminably – an hour a day, 26 episodes!] because it is Jubilee Year. It is a drama following the English Crown from Edward II's accession in 1307 to the birth of Elizabeth I, told through the adapted works of Shakespeare, Marlowe and other playwrights of the period. Richard Burton, Martin Jarvis, John Hurt, Peggy Ashcroft and others provide the voices.
It is almost becoming a bit of a boar! I hadn’t realised how many people are still fascinated by the events that took place more than 500 years ago. There are a multiplicity of societies who endeavour to right the wrongs done to RIII, and correct all the errors perpetrated by that Tudor Playwright Shakespeare. [Such groups are probably fuming at Vivat Rex, and shouting at their radios!] Here and here…
And despite reading lots of opinions on both sides, I am still undecided about those two little boys in the Tower…
This site thinks Richard killed them, and good old “Look And Learn” has what seems to me to be a very ambiguous article [here]
“The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones” says Mark Antony in another of the Bard’s plays. I do not think Richard III can have been all bad. I want to believe the theory that they were smuggled out of the Tower to grow up safely somewhere else. But that is because I hate the thought of the alternative.
I need to stop pondering on the past and get on with the present…
Which historical mysteries which intrigue you?
I have just finished reading a fictional story based around what is known about Anne Neville who was Richard's wife, called "Virgin Widow" by Anne O'Brien. I love reading this sort of book and frequently read Phillipa Gregory and Alison Weir books.
ReplyDeleteThis is the one that gets me as well...I've recently read a book which came down against Richard, but then the Josephine Tey book is one of my all time favourites. I'd love to think they were smuggled out, but I think it is more likely they were killed. The question is when, and on whose orders.
ReplyDeleteYes! I loved The Daughter of Time, too! And The Inspector Morse book, The Wench is Dead, is good in a similar way - you can see the influence of the first on the second. You can go way back for this - the death of Otzi the Ice Man has produced a lot of speculation. My mum was really upset when she realised he'd been shot 5300 years ago.
ReplyDeleteRoanoke for one!
ReplyDeleteI love your brain, Angela! You are such a good thinker, teacher, writer, and most of all, follower of Jesus.
I confess that I only heard about Roanoke relatively recently. New ideas have just emerged THIS MONTH from the British Museum! http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/05/07/new-clue-to-mystery-lost-roanoke-colony/
DeleteAngela, we had tea with Richard III a few years ago at Middleham Castle (his birthplace) and he said he most definitely did not do it !!!
ReplyDeleteBut does he have a HUNCH about who did?
DeleteOoh, Roanoke! So spooky... I shall follow up that link of yours.
ReplyDeleteHe didn't have a hunch either. He would not have been able to train in all his equestrian and military pursuits if he had. Henry had more reason to kill the princes.
ReplyDeleteOoh, you were over in my neck of the woods. You live so tantalisingly close. Anyway, I loved "The Daughter of Time" but couldn't bear "The Franchise Affair" so I don't know quite how I feel about Josephine Tey. When Sarah Walters was writing "The Little Stranger" she read a lot of Tey and was very much influenced by her - and women's domestic literature of the time - have you read it yet?
ReplyDelete