Richard III

Theatre & History & Richard III

 
First of all, congratulations to Mark Selby, the ‘Jester from Leicester’.
I know, he has nothing to do with King Richard III’s court, though a good jester surely could have been of value there. But I am quite sure King Richard III might have enjoyed the dramatic finale in the Snooker World Championship as well. When two of my favourite Snooker players are in the final competition, unfortunately only one of them can win. Great match, great players, worthy finale!
 
Now to another delicacy for all readers from and visiting London…
 
 


♛ Richard III in London ♛


 
Custom Practice
is an ambitious theatre company from London, founded in 2010.
Their newest production, Shakespeare’s Richard III, by director Rae McKen uses authentic historical costume, designed by Fraz Roughton.
The pictures from the production already shared on Facebook give an interesting glimps of the time and how King Richard III and his comtemporaries might have looked like.
 
Facebook Foto-Album (Also visible without Facebook account.)
 

 
Richard III
Till 18th of May 2014: in The Cockpit, London
From Friday 20th – Sunday 22nd of June 2014: in the Greenwich Theatre, London
 
 
Custom Practice (on Facebook)
 
Custom Practice (Richard III – website)
 
 

Richard Armitage – TheOneRing.net – The End of a King

 
 


TheOneRing.net – Interview by Greendragon


 
Interviewed by GreenDragon for TheOneRing.net (14.04.2014) about his role as Thorin Oakenshield in Sir Peter Jacksons record breaking production “The Hobbit”, Richard Armitage mentions King Richard III again.
 
As glad as I am that even for Tolkien fans King Richard III is worth a question, I must admit, I wonder if the late battles around King Richard III brought this change and caused this very distancing statement about Mr. Armitage’s interest in telling the (hi)story of King Richard III.
 


 
GreenDragon: One last thing I’m interested to ask you about – I keep reading about your fascination with Richard III, and that you have interest in making a film about him. I just wondered what truth there is in any of that?

It was an idea that I had a while back. But my interest in it is really a hobby, of reading biographies, and I was once working with a script writer on something. I don’t know whether a documentary would be of interest… it’s difficult, finding something which is going to be commercially interesting, and for an audience – I don’t know how many people would be that excited about him… My interest in him doesn’t necessarily have to manifest itself in a piece of work. Even if it’s me going back on stage and playing him; it’s purely a hobby for me.

 
GreenDragon: It’s a fascinating topic – particularly when you consider how Shakespeare has painted him into one particular corner…

Yeah, I mean Shakespeare really created a bit of a pantomime and put him at the centre of it. It’s a brilliant thriller, but I don’t know how biased Shakespeare was… Well, I do know how biased he was, because he was writing for a Tudor monarch! But I think there’s a tale to tell. I think the BBC maybe are investigating doing a project about Richard, but we’ll see. I think there’s always room for a new take on it; and there’s plenty of literature out there. The Daughter of Time [Josephine Tey] is such an interesting book, and that would be worth exploring.

 

King Richard & Mr. Armitage & Cheese

 
Richard Armitage is currently filming in Leeds, U.K., and was interviewed by Geeta Pendse from BBC East Midlands Today (02.04.2014), where he once again mentioned his connection to and interest in King Richard III.
 
The video of the interview is available on Facebook (no Facebook account necessary to watch the interview).
 
Perhaps, I should not introduce the interview so neutrally here.
After all, Mr. Armitage is announced in the comment to the video on Facebook as:
 
Gorgeous Hollywood hearthrob“.
 
 
The transcript of the interview part about King Richard III follows here:
 
 


BBC East Midlands Today – Interview with actor Richard Armitage by Geeta Pendse


 
Geeta Pendse: Obviously, your name is Richard, and there is someone very famous that is called Richard, … who was recently discovered in Leicester.

Richard Madeley, I know, that is amazing, isn’t it?

[British readers perhaps will be able to verify the name of the celebrity, Mr. Armitage mentions here in his comment. I just guessed and googled…]
 
Geeta Pendse: Also Richard III. Are you named after Richard III?

I was born on the 22nd of August and that was when he died on the battlefield at Bosworth. That is one of those history questions that I always got right. But my dad was really into Richard III, so he chose that name. I think if I hadn’t been born on the 22nd of August, I might have been called Russell.

 
Geeta Pendse: Do you know, I am born on the 22nd of August and I am not called Richard.

And you are not called Richard.

 
Geeta Pendse: What happened? Maybe it was this whole girl thing.

I don’t know. We could think of another name for you. – Elizabeth.

 
Geeta Pendse: Yeah. And were you aware of this whole story unraveling in Leicester?

I was in New Zealand at the time, so I was receiving the news sort of sporadically. But yeah. I am kind of fascinated and thrilled that they found him and have laid him to rest or whether that’s still up in the air as to where he is going to be laid to rest. But yeah. I still haven’t had chance to visit the site yet, but I will.

 
Geeta Pendse: And do you ever visit Leicester?

I do, especially, I am working in the U.K. at the moment, I am working up in Leeds. I have visited Leicester quite a few times, but mainly to the country side. I haven’t been into the city center for a while.

 
Geeta Pendse: So, if I could bring you one thing from Leicestershire […]

Pork pie and a piece of Stilton.

 
Geeta Pendse: You are on. We will do that.

Deal.

 
 


 
 
I must admit, a man who loves cheese has won my sympathies forever. I am currently on a discovery tour to all the varieties of English cheese, so the end of the following interview was an especial highlight for me.
 
But now follows my first embedding of a Facebook post. So I hope it works…
 

 
 

King Richard III & Envy

 
In my whole observations about the research concerning King Richard III, I always wonder, why everybody thinks to be able to judge him on some prejudice, rumour, envy or other motive and readily dismisses valid research done on a broad basis evaluating the available material.
A historian is bound to build as complete a basis for a research as possible and only after reviewing all (!) available sources, is allowed to come to a conclusion and has to argument from all possible angles the validity of the own conclusions.
 
So you will find me shaking my head in utter astonishment concerning the current discussion about King Richard III, which gets high press coverage in renowned newspapers and magazines.
I also find it hard to decide how best to present this new discussion to you, as in the major part it is so nonsensical, that I wonder why it gets so much and famous attention at all.
 
First I want to state that I am in no way connected to or bound to defend the University of Leicester and one certainly can argue if all researches done by them were necessary or interfered with the dignity of the person of King Richard III, but this current discussion certainly shows they were exceedingly necessary.
 
The argument now raised against the University of Leicester and their result to confirm the identity of the found skeleton as being of King Richard III, is that the skeleton could easily be of some other soldier buried there, just conveniently being of the direct female line leading to King Richard III’s mother.
How many unaccounted for relatives, having the exact female blood line of King Richard III, do you think are lying around somewhere? Or better are lying around at the exact spot King Richard III should be? And in addition have died in the Battle of Bosworth or by incident around that time near Leicester, so that they are buried in the Grey Friars’ Abbey? While just in the late court battle, one of the main arguments against a burial in Leicester is, that King Richard III’s family just had no connections to Leicester? So how can forgotten relatives turn up there? And were the ‘grey friars’, while so discriminating in burying people in the choir of their church, suddenly burying soldiers from the battlefield, carting them all the way from the Bosworth battlefield? Why then were only so few skeletons found and not hundreds and only one with battle marks? Oh, and what a strange method to bury them without clothes and with bound hands? Really, the ‘grey friars’ must have had no piety at all…
 
I could go on much longer, as a result of the conclusive multitude of researches done by the University of Leicester and though some think it may now be enough research done on the skeleton of King Richard III, still the results in their entirety (not necessarily one taken on its own) give us a very complete and convincing affirmation of the skeleton’s identity as being King Richard III.
 
Especially helpful in that regard to see the full picture of research results and why they were done, is the excessive pre-research done by Dr. John Ashdown-Hill, who with great determination researched the potential last burial place of King Richard III from all historical angles and laid down his progress of research as well as the conclusions he came to in his work “The Last Days of Richard III”, which we have recommended here repeatedly, as it is the go-to research which was essential in finding King Richard III.
 
 
You see, I think the counter-argument just is so far-fetched as envy possibly can make it. Perhaps, it is due to scholars feeling left out from the euphoria and joy over the find in Leicester and now try to jump on the media attention created by the extraordinary research results in Leicester.
I just don’t get it, why the media jumps on this envy train so readily and let itself be used in such a way.
 
The news stream includes the articles of this new conflict in the sidebar and in the 2014-archive (entries dated around the end of March 2014).
 
But it provides heated arguments and is one more battle area in the new “Wars of the Roses” or rather a new skirmish.
 
(I am quite certain the list of battles around King Richard III will have to be continued …)
 
But now to something creative and constructive about King Richard III:
 
 


♛ King Richard III ♛


 
Matt Lewis – New Podcast series about King Richard III (iTunes)
 

 
Also available via the YouTube channel of Matt Lewis.
 

New Approach to King Richard III

 
Lately there have been quite some delays in delivering the news here on KRA. That is due to me being totally overworked and once again fighting with computer hard- and software. As the problems are not house made, but rather involve service providers and those companies so far have not been able to eliminate the causes for the problems, the difficulties might continue for a while longer, till my entire building and town region get new wires, as those seem to be the most likely culprit, as all else has failed to solve the problem so far.
 
To enable me to keep you updated, while not bother you with numerous messages whenever I have time to accumulate the news, I changed the way of collecting the news stream.
Each news item gets its own post – which, depending on your settings, could result in an individual alert for each newspaper article. As I cannot be sure that is what you are interest in to get here from the KRA website, those news posts now run into a separate sub-blog on the website.
To avoid sending out an alert for every single news article and annoy you with a flood of mails and posts you might or might not be interested in, the news does not go out into the general RSS-feed and newsletter alerts.
 
If you want to get all the news alerts from KRA in the future, you will need to

  • follow us on Twitter, where all alerts run into our tweets
  • or watch our Facebook page, where also all messages are collected indiscriminately.
  • watch the new “NewsStream” pages (NewsStream / 2014-News – annual news selections)
  • or subscribe to the second NewsAlert for the NewsStream in addition to our general Blog-Alerts (Both newsletter subscription forms are in the sidebar. The general blog alert is in the top and the NewsStream subscription form is below the NewsStream-preview.)

 
Subscribe to NewsStream-Updates:

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

 
News gets announced as soon as I find it and have time to put it up.
The NewsStream pages are strictly sorted by day, so news I find at a later date might not always be the last on top, but will show up on the pages at the correct date the news was originally published.
 
This is in no way a guarantee that the NewsStream will either cover all news or necessarily your or our opinion. I am only human and only take articles which do not copy content already mentioned elsewhere, but really have news and something ‘new’ in them.
As I am over my head in work, I hope this is a way to either keep you updated and still keep the workload doable for me.
 
Greetings and best wishes,
CDoart
 


♛ King Richard III ♛


 
Some older news, which I still want to mention, as they are central in the latest discussions about King Richard III and his adequate handling. The UStream video-stream of the King Richard III conference held by the St. Louis University temporarily was not available or only transferred with major sound problems at the time. I now tested it once again and currently it works fine, so I want to bring it to your attention again.

Richard Armitage Asked About King Richard III

 
The Anglophile Channel, U.S.A. revealed that
due to the results of their poll with participation worldwide, Richard Armitage is the
 

“Favourite British Artist of the Year 2013”.

 
In combination with giving Richard Armitage his well deserved price trophy, Marlise Boland interviewed him and asked the for us central question what Richard Armitage intends to do about King Richard III:
 
Marlise Boland: Is it true you were named after Richard III?

RA: It is true. Yes. I was born on the 22nd of August …

Marlise Boland: The day of his demise.

RA: Right. At the Battle of Bosworth.

Marlise Boland: So you do have affinity to that historical character.
Do you want to play him on stage or do you want to have a film project made out of his story?

RA: He is never really far from my head when it comes to assembling some kind of visual documentation of his life. […] I think he deserves a cinematic outing, that story.
I think it is an extraordinary tale. I think the Wars of the Roses is extraordinary. The last […] English monarch to die on the battlefield – in combat – and actually, a noble death.
A misinterpreted character, I think. But that is the reason to go exploring, because we don’t really know. […]
I don’t know whether I’ll get to play him in a movie, but I’ll certainly have a crack at him on stage.

Marlise Boland: Would you write the script? Have you written a script?

RA: I am not much of a writer. I am good at adapting other people’s writing.
But, yea. The assembling of ideas and gathering people together on a table is something that is my longterm goal over the next 30 years.
I’ll probably be acting less and producing more.

 
 

(The interview “Richard Armitage Interview Part 3: Richard the Third! with Marlis Boland (09.03.2014)” with Richard Armitage was released in three parts on YouTube. Here in the third part the question about King Richard III starts at about 3:10.)
 
The Anglophile Channel, U.S.A. (future website)
 


 

Research & King Richard’s Life

 
First of all, before I start with news about King Richard III and actor Richard Armitage again in the new year 2014,
I hope you reached the year 2014 in good health and will have a wonderful and successful year!!!
 
My own beginning of the year 2014 was a bit sub-optimal in various aspects and so the year ahead has a very wide bandwidth of opportunity to get better ;o)
Hopefully your start into 2014 was better than mine and the year advances to a fantastic outcome, maybe even the hotly anticipated announcement of the King Richard Armitage – film.
 
 


♛ King Richard Armitage ♛


 

  • The Sag Harbor Express: The Hobbit’s Hunks, Part II: Lee Pace and Richard Armitage, by Danny Peary (02.01.2014) – Interview where Richard Armitage once again mentions King Richard III as his inspiration for Thorin Oakenshield in “The Hobbit”:
    [SPOILER ALERT, as ending of “The Hobbit” trilogy/book is mentioned in the following quote!]

    Danny Peary: Would you play your character any differently if you didn’t know that at the end of Tolkien’s book he dies?

    Richard Armitage: No, probably not. His death scene was left until quite late in the shoot. We didn’t shoot it until pick-ups, which I think was a good thing because I’d almost forgotten about that moment coming. I think that part of the creation of this character is offering the audience and other characters in the movie a potential future. He had to be someone who was going to be king, he was going to sit on that throne and return the dwarves to their former glory. And in a way, his death has to come by surprise to him. Having said that, I think one of the things – talking about Shakespeare again – that I admire about Richard the III is that he rides across the battlefield to fight, single-handedly, for his kingdom, for his crown. In the Battle of the Five Armies, Thorin is going to do something like that. It’s fatalistic. It’s fatalistic. It’s almost an act of suicide. Playing it, it’s good I forgot I needed to die!

 
 
But now to the late news and, you will almost expect it already, a new petition about King Richard III:
 
 


♛ King Richard III ♛


 
New Petition about King Richard III’s remains and their interim resting place:
Justice Review panel on the subject of Richard III, London,England.: Remove the remains of King Richard III to a neutral site
 
The current treatment of King Richard III’s bones reveals much about our modern attitude and lax treatment of death and the dead.
While such a treatment would have been seen as denigrating and demeaning to a person of King Richard III’s time, when the body was seen as a sacred unity given by God. Even medical research into the inner parts and structure of the body was met with great aversion and even banned by the church as it was destroying the God given ‘body’. Though it could be argued that King Richard III with his connections to scholars of the university of Padua might have had a more pro-active approach. Only a time-traveler might find out the truth and I hope he will then let us know …
Please take part in the petition(s) as you see fit and your belief dictates you.
 

Richard Armitage & Richard III & Christmas

 
1805834eapz5xo3w3
 

Merry Christmas, seasonal greetings

 

and happy and enjoyable festivities

 

to all our supporters, interview partners, article-authors and signers of the petition. A big Thank You and all the best wishes !

 
Now to a real Christmas treat for all Richard III and Richard Armitage ‘well-wishers‘:
 


♛ King Richard Armitage ♛


 
Richard Armitage in a late interview with Helen of Empire magazine (podcast of about 13.12.2013 – Richard III part begins at about 1:36:00)
speaking about his connection and interest in King Richard III:
 

 
Transcript of the part about King Richard III:
 
Helen (interviewer):
Is it true that you were named after Richard III?

RA: That is true. Yes.
My father was really into the history of the Plantagenets and I was born on 22nd of August which is the Battle of Bosworth Field when Richard died on the battlefield.
I was always a bit mad at my dad, because – for naming me after what was perceived to be a hunchbacked child-murderer. But then in later years I just developed a similar interest in the story, because we used to visit there every year on my birthday. Thanks, dad.
That was my birthday treat to go and look at an empty field, but – in recent months his remains had been found so it is all kind of coming to the surface again.

 
Helen: Quite literally.

RA: Literally.

Helen: When you said you began to share his interest I was worried you meant the child murdering and hunchback.

RA: No, no. No, definitely not that. Although, but the fascination with the sort of unsolved crime, I did become kind of interested in not necessarily resurrecting his heroicism, but just looking at the story again.
Because he was our last monarch that died on a battlefield and it’s interesting how I am sort of playing a character that is not dissimilar to him in Thorin. So I was using a bit of that – you know – character in Thorin. Yea.

 
 
 


♛ King Richard III ♛


 

 
To celebrate there is a new music album about King Richard III, “Loyaulte Me Lie” by Guitarist Ian Churchward.

Books & King Richard III

 
 


♛ King Richard & Books ♛


 
Christmas is coming up and as books still are one of the most favourite presents, I collect some reading tips here for you.
 
Not that I get through the multitude of new publications about King Richard right now – and some books still await me at Christmas – but there are new books I especially wanted to bring to your attention and recommend here, as I enjoyed reading them myself.
 
If you have books you would like to add to this recommendation, please feel free to either post them in the comment section of this post or send me a mail (contact form) to write and explain more about your recommendation and why you like the book(s).
 
Victoria Smith let us know her favourite King Richard III novel “The Murders of Richard III” by Elizabeth Peters and especially wrote a review for us.
 

(As usual here on KRA, earnings from embedded affiliate links on this site go to the charities recommended by actor Richard Armitage on his JustGiving page.)

 
 


♛ King Richard & Jane Shore ♛


 

Isolde Martyn – “Mistress to the Crown”

 
“Mistress to the Crown” follows the life and struggle for freedom of Jane Shore, the famous and influential mistress of King Richard III’s oldest brother, King Endward IV.
 
Her life never appeared to me as an especially romantic one, so a novel about Jane Shore coming out in a publishing house known for its extensive romantic novels instantly got my full interest.
 
From my previous comments about other works of the author Isolde Martyn, you already know that I adore her writing style.
Isolde Martyn also does not disappoint in this novel:
 

  • Her writing is fluent and gripping that once I began reading, I could not put the book down. Though I already know the story of Jane Shore, I still needed to know how her life and fate unfolds in the story.
  •  

  • The historical research which went into this novel is extensive and far beyond what I would normally expect from a historical novel. So for me, Isolde Martyn’s novels clearly are in a ‘historical novel’ class of their own.
    But the astonishing part of this for me is, that the books do not appear like a historical lecture, but unobtrusively and fluently the fate of Jane Shore unfolds in a way where I begin to care for her, while I never felt very ‘understanding’ for her and her fate before.
  •  

  • For all King Richard interested readers, of course King Richard plays his role in the book as well, though more as a background figure, but still actively influencing the fate of Jane Shore.

 
At the time of the first English publication (03/2013), we published an
interview with author Isolde Martyn (14.03.2013).
 
Now, the book is also available in a German edition:

(The print edition was not available via Amazon.de at the time of the post, but should be shortly. If you want to order it for Christmas, here is the direct link to the publisher.)
 
Links to the English version:

 
 


♛ King Richard & Art ♛


 
Author Matthew Lewis (interview of 27th of August 2013, with book links) in his novel “Loyalty” follows Jack Leslau’s (http://www.holbeinartworks.org/) research and picture analysis and brings King Richard III in connection with the Holbein household.
 

 


♛ King Richard & Research ♛


 


University of Leicester: ‘Beyond reasonable doubt’: archaeologists give first-hand account of Richard III discovery in new book, by Peter Thorley (04.11.2013)
 
From the intense research done to find and identify King Richard III, I must admit, I had expected a big volume of a book. The publication is a rather slim one, but so much filled with detail and information, that I am not the least bit disappointed.
Though much of the information and material had been published in the press already, the explanations and collection of image material and details known about King Richard III is unique and I am very glad to have this book as a valuable reference about the last days of King Richard III as well as his discovery in Leicester.
So though the book is not a detailed description about how King Richard III was found in Leicester – go to the publication by Philippa Langley and Michael Jones for that – I really can recommend this book for the invaluable collection of research results.
 


 

Philippa Langley/Michael Jones: The King’s Grave

 

 


 
Dr. John Ashdown-Hill did the essential research to enable the following work by the University of Leicester to find King Richard III.
His publications show the fascinating search for details so far missing or overlooked, but which proved to be exceedingly necessary to the final search:
 

 
More details about Dr. John Ashdown-Hill.
 
Just recently published:

 
Dr. John Ashdown-Hill also works on a new publication about King Richard III’s brother, George Plantagenet, the Duke of Clarence – you know the always irritating one where legend has it that he ended in a butt of Malmsey wine.
 
Announced for March 2014:

 


 
More book and author recommendations.
 
 

 
 

Book Review: Victoria Smith presents “The Murders of Richard III” by Elizabeth Peters

 

Elizabeth Peters “The Murders of Richard III”

 


♛ Review by Victoria Smith ♛


 
I love a good story. History is so often presented as a dry collection of names and dates, when in reality history is a retelling off the lives of people. And people are very rarely as dry as a list of their names and dates and would suggest.
So, when it comes to history I have learned more from well researched historical fiction than any academic tome.
 
Such was the case with The Murders of Richard the III written by Elizabeth Peters (Barbara Mertz).
She has a PhD in Egyptology and Ms. Peter’s scholastic aptitude is apparent in her historically detailed mysteries.
 
This book is set at a weekend retreat of Ricardians, who have gathered to reveal new evidence that they believe will finally exonerate Richard III of the murders of his nephews. With the media descending someone begins to recreate the murders attributed to Richard III. Debates about the legitimacy of Edward IV’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, the political machinations of the Duke of Buckingham, and the fates of the princes are peppered throughout the novel as the Ricardians are torn between solving the mysterious fate of the princes or identifying who is trying to discredit them or silence them forever.
 
I read the book because Elizabeth Peters is one of my favorite authors.
But, while the book is entertaining, it caused me to question my assumptions about Richard III. Most of what I thought about Richard III seems to have been based on Shakespeare’s’ interpretation of his character. As I read, I found myself chuckling over a character’s passionate disparaging of Sir Thomas More’s biography of Richard III as Tudor propaganda and wondering about the man who, in his short reign, was the center of so much conflict both during his lifetime and ours.
Not what I expected when I picked up Ms. Peters book for a few hours of entertainment!
 
For those of you who are well versed in Ricardian lore this book will not be a source of education as it was for me but you just might enjoy the humorous and engaging read.
 

 

Petition - Status !

As of July
22nd 2022, 6 p.m. (CET)
we have 2482 signatures.

Go to sign...

 


Search the Site:

Subscribe to News-Updates:

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner


KRA NewsStream


March 26, 2015

King Richard III reburial: RECAP on updates from Leicester (by Sam Adams, Mirror.co.uk)


March 26, 2015

King Richard III’s re-interment carries pomp and grandeur of state funeral (by Maev Kennedy, The Guardian)


March 26, 2015

King Richard III of England Is Reburied in Leicester Cathedral (by John F. Burns, New York Times)


March 26, 2015

Queen Elizabeth II’s Letter for King Richard III’s re-interment ceremony in Leicester Cathedral (by Queen Elizabeth II, Royal Letter)


March 26, 2015

Richard by Carol Ann Duffy (by Carol Ann Duffy, The Guardian)


March 26, 2015

Richard III – The Answers (by Matthew Lewis, Matt’s History Blog)


March 25, 2015

Richard III DNA tests uncover evidence of further royal scandal (by Ian Sample, The Guardian)


March 25, 2015

Richard III: 20,000 visit coffin in Leicester Cathedral (BBC News)


March 25, 2015

People start queuing at 4am for last chance to see Richard III coffin at Leicester Cathedral (by atroughton, Leicester Mercury)


March 25, 2015

King Richard III: Special digital edition now available to download (Leicester Mercury)


 

(To further news & commented NewsStream)

Subscribe to NewsStream-Updates:

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner


 

KRA BookTips

.com.co.uk

KRA-Banner Quiz 2015
KRA-Banner Quiz 2014

♛ Recent Posts ♛


KRA-Week 2013 - SideBanner 1

♛ Post Archive ♛


King Richard Fan Art Fan-Art banner small