The Search for Richard III: The King's Grave

Most of us know a bit about Richard III – the hunchbacked killer of his two nephews, the Princes in the Tower of London. In Shakespeare’s play he is evil, scheming, and a pretender to the throne. However, there is evidence that he was loyal to his brother, King Edward IV, a fair and just king during his own short reign, and not clearly connected to the disappearance of his nephews.

What we do know for sure is that he was killed on 22 August 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth, losing to Henry Tudor, who became King Henry VII. Legend had it that he was hastily buried in the Church of the Greyfriars without the pomp befitting a king who dies in battle. Fifty years after the battle, the church was destroyed at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries and Richard’s grave was never found.

The Search for Richard III: The King's Grave, by Philippa Langley and Michael Jones, 2013, details the archeological search and discovery of Richard III’s skeleton in a car park on the site where Greyfriars Church was believed to have once stood. The archeological dig was approved (with great difficulty, time and approval for funding) not to find Richard’s remains, but to find evidence of the church. Yet on the first day of digging, the skeleton was found.

Philippa Langley, the woman who was determined to find the grave, correctly identified the exact spot in the car park under which the skeleton was buried – by pure instinct. She writes that the first time she was in the car park where the body was eventually found, she felt a strange, tingling sensation and believed that Richard’s remains were in this particular place. A year later, she returned to that place while she was writing a screenplay for a program about Richard III. She writes:

“A year later, after completing the first draft of my screenplay, I returned to the car park, questioning if what I had felt that day had been real. As I walked to the same spot and looked at the Victorian wall, the goose-bumps reappeared. I stared down at my feet. Slightly to my left, on the tarmac, there was something new – a white, hand-painted latter ‘R’, denoting a ‘reserved’ parking spot, but it told me all I needed to know.”

It turned out that ‘R’ really marked the spot where the archeologists found Richard III’s skeleton. Truth is truly stranger than fiction.

The book’s chapters alternate between the two authors’ focus of study: Langley writes about the effort to start the archeological dig and the finding of Richard’s remains, and Jones writes about the background of Richard III, his life in the 15^th century, and the battle in which he died.

This book provided information about the long road to the permission for the archeological dig, background of Richard III and his times, mystery, suspense and the steps and triumph of such an incredible discovery. Some reviewers have criticized Langley’s more emotional writing, but I shared her excitement during the step-by-step unraveling of the mystery of finding Richard’s remains. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Richard III, the finding of his remains, the end of the York royal line or English history.

The author Michael Jones also wrote Bosworth, 1485: Psychology of a Battle about the Battle of Bosworth itself. I never thought that I would be interested in a description of a battle, but Jones writes in a very readable style and makes every detail sound so interesting. His clear explanation of both Richard III’s life and family as well as aspects of battle at the time give background that puts details about the battle in context.