The debate rages on over where to bury Richard III, recently discovered in a Leicester car park.
“Leicester certainly deserves it for all the heroic work in finding him,” says historian David Horspool, who has been commissioned by Bloomsbury to write a book about Richard’s enduring reputation. “But there’s a good argument for Westminster Abbey and not just because the Princes in the Tower are buried there (if those bones are theirs). Richard’s wife, Anne Neville, is interred there too and it does seem to be agreed that, like his brother, Richard married at least in part for love.
“Richard’s reputation hasn’t been all one way over the years, for all Shakespeare’s sway,” adds Horspool, history editor of the Times Literary Supplement. “In the 18th century, a painting showing him as severely deformed was painted over to reduce the impairment.”
There is praise for Richard from Laurence Olivier’s son Tarquin, too. “Larry would have been thrilled,” he says. “He always felt Shakespeare vilified the Plantagenets so as to please the Tudor Elizabethan court.”
