George Peter Algar – The Shepherd Lord
One’s death the other’s fortune?
You will ask, what we mean with that subtitle. But that is exactly the fateful combination between the “Shepherd Lord” and King Richard III. King Richard’s death leads to the change in the ‘Shepherd Lord’s’ fortune.
The Shepherd Lord is son to John Clifford, the 9th earl, an enemy of King Richard III and his family, who is said to have personally killed King Richard III’s brother Edmund, the Earl of Rutland, after the battle of Wakefield, where also King Richard III’s father died in the year 1460.
The Shepherd Lord’s father once again fought for the Lancastrian side against King Edward IV in the battle of Towton on Palm Sunday of the year 1461, where he is defeated and killed. This leads to the hiding of the son Henry, to assure his safety. After the end of the Plantagenet’s reign, Henry Clifford was able to come back into his power, rightful inheritance and family name and he became the 10th Earl after his father.
I can console you, King Richard, as always, cannot be seen as complete and total enemy and bad guy in these bloody events. He intervened in favour of “The Shepherd Lord’s” family, while his brother Edward IV’s was still king, and once again takes an ambivalent position, which remains for us to chose, do we see him as totally bad or through and through good person. King Richard III rarely allows us to see him in a mediocre way, but rather black and white, depending on one’s perspective.
Though King Richard III only plays a background figure in the events of this story, the book sheds more light on the intrigues and family interests of this time and the gripping story of “The Shepherd Lord” is a worthy recommendation in its own right.
David Santiuste interviewed author and researcher Mr. Algar for Historytimes.com and kindly let us re-publish his interview. (Please follow the link to the full interview):
Interview with George Peter Algar about “The Shepherd Lord”
Algar, George Peter: The Shepherd Lord
The basis for the story about Henry Clifford and the first literary mentioning of the ‘Shepherd Lord’ is William Wordsworth’s poem
“Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle”
of the year 1807,
which we link in here via The Project Gutenberg, to give you a further appetizer for the book about “The Shepherd Lord”. The re-print of the poem by Project Gutenberg also contains further annotations of the author William Wordsworth about the historical background, which are interesting to read as well.
Author’s website: The Shepherd Lord
Author’s blog: GeorgeAlgar.com
Maria Grazia of Fly High and King Richard III
The reason why you are our guest today, Maria Grazia, is that your main blog, FLY HIGH!
features pages dedicated to Richard III and to Richard Armitage. You’ve been writing about RA’s career and work for a while now and you’ve started an interesting series focused on Richard III and his history – with posts written by you and by experts – recently (Link list follows below the interview!). You seem to be keen on both Richard III and Richard Armitage, hence, you are the ideal guest for this site. Welcome!
Richard Armitage by Matt Holyoak for Project Magazine 7/2011
King Richard III (Source: Wikimedia.org) Image flipped horizontal!
Thanks for inviting me. You are right I have got a real interest in both the men. I really hope Richard Armitage will achieve his dream of shooting/producing a TV series about Richard III and that it could contribute to the spreading of a new, more positive image of the wrongly despised King of England.
What was it that brought you to want to know more about King Richard III, who in literature mostly got a description of being an ugly, hunchbacked and crippled King?
I owe my enthusiasm for the Ricardian cause and my extraordinary quest in search for the real Richard III to a novel: Sharon Kay Penman’s The Sunne in Splendour. It was such a revelation for someone like me who had always and only read Shakespeare’s tragic portrait of him as the ultimate villain. An incredibly powerful characterization but so distant from the reality, I bet.
After that novel, I’ve read other interesting ones based on a completely positive image of Richard III: Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time and Anne O’Brien’s The Virgin Queen.
The ugly monster who killed his nephews to get to the throne was substituted by the very humane figure of a complex, loyal, dutiful man.
Was the fascination more because of the image you had because of Shakespeare or were other factors more important?
I’ve never been so interested in Shakespeare‘s Richard III, actually. His historical plays are the ones I know and appreciate the least. I prefer tragedies like Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Othello or comedies like The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado about Nothing, Twelfth Night or As you like it. Smart dramatist and wonderfully gifted writer as Shakespeare was, he fully achieved his aim with the Tudor propaganda: fiction replaced history and it has gone on like that for centuries. Richard Plantagenet has been Shakespeare’s hunchbacked and crippled king for so many and for so long. But now I’m fascinated by the contrast between the documents discovered later on – with the resulting new hypothesis – and Shakespeare’s account of those facts.
Can you share a very special fan-event / moment determining your interest in King Richard with us?
Well, as you may guess, everything started when I heard Richard Armitage talk about his Richard III project. I had been following his career for a while after watching him as John Thornton in North and South, when I happened to watch an interview for the promotion of Robin Hood season 2, in which he talked about a different image of Richard III in a script he was working on. I was struck by lightning: “Richard III was not wicked?!? What is this all about”?
So I started researching and I discovered The Ricardian Society and their cause.[Annotation: More information and contact details of the Richard III Society in this article and page on KRA.]
I’ve listened and read more of Richard Armitage about Richard III (the interview in the Venetia audiobook, an interview for Strike Back on the radio and , especially the interview at Vulpex Libris) until I decided to buy and read The Sunne in Splendour and … I got in love with Sharon Kay Penman’s Dickon. Now, I can’t actually see Richard Armitage (an adult man) as young Dickon, but I would love to see him as Richard III in the last years of his life.
What is a special aspect / character trait of King Richard III which fascinates you?
His being loyal to his brother, King Edward IV, to his duties as Duke of Gloucester and Lord of the North, to his family. Then, the picture I have in my mind is biased by the romantic Dickon Ms Penman portrayed, of course, but I can only imagine him as a very sensitive and thoughtful husband and father. Just have a look at his concerned look in his portrait: that can’t be the look of a wicked person.
Did you see some of the places where King Richard lived, stayed, was?
Oh indeed I did! And it was memorable. I went to Yorkshire in July and the best moment of the Ricardian tour was our visit to Middleham Castle. It was so thrilling, even moving. I was touched and sad during that visit. The place was bleak and windy. I so wanted to have glimpses of the happy moments Richard had lived there, but it was not easy. Then I was at Sheriff Hutton and at Bosworth. I wrote about that experience on Fly High and you can see also some of my pictures in “On the Footsteps of Richard III”.
What about you and … Richard Armitage?
Richard Armitage is my favourite actor and my “one weakness“. Everything started in August 2008 when I decided to buy a DVD online titled NORTH AND SOUTH (BBC 2004). I wanted to use it in my lessons about Mrs Gaskell and her novels. It was the end of my old serious prof-style life and the beginning of a half – serious addiction to everything this man happens to do. And he has surprised me in many ways so far: he was young Monet (one of my favourite painters!), wicked Lovelace in Richardson’s Clarissa, a handsome workaholic doctor in The Golden Hour, evil Gisborne in Robin Hood, tender John Standring in Sparkhouse, dashing treacherous John Mulligan in Moving On, lovely Harry J. Kennedy in The Vicar of Dibley, but last and definitely not least, he miraculously landed on my favourite BBC series, SPOOKS as Lucas North. I know this list is not complete but these are just the first roles which came to my mind in no particular order. I’m glad he’s going to be under global spotlight as Thorin Oakenshield in The Hobbit and would eagerly like him as King Richard III.
Do your family / friends / colleagues share your admiration for King Richard III?
I’ve got few friends who share my interest in Richard III but no colleague or member of my family, unfortunately. However, thanks to my blog I’ve had the chance to meet other admirers from all over the world!
Maria Grazia lives in Italy, not far from Rome. She teaches English as a foreign language to teenage students and English literature and she loves her job. She became a blogger to help her students and support them with useful materials in 2008 and blogging has become her main hobby. Fly High is her main site about books, art, period drama, movies, classic literature, historical fiction and Richard Armitage. She’s also got a Jane Austen-dedicated page, My Jane Austen Book Club, where she “meets” Janeites to discuss everything Austen. She’s married and has two teenage sons.
Maria Grazia and her articles about King Richard III on FLY HIGH:
Maria Grazia online:
- Twitter – SmaryG
- Facebook –Fly High
- Facebook – My Jane Austen Book Club
- Maria Grazia on paperblog
Shakespeare – What he Should Have Written …
Shakespeare’s “Richard III” is well or mostly not so well remembered from school.
It is common knowledge that Shakespeare was very creative with forming historical detail anew to reach the greatest effect for his plays, so he cannot be seen as a reliable source for the times of King Richard III.
That even King Richard III himself has strong objections against Shakespeare’s version of the story, shows this funny little video by “Horrible Histories”:
But the endeavor to write, what Shakespeare should have written if he had been more true to real events, nobody undertook before
Robert Fripp (Photo: © Taffi Rosen, Toronto)
Robert Fripp
Robert Fripp and his work “Dark Sovereign” are presented in an article by Maria Grazia on her blog Fly High!.
The book can be ordered via Amazon and is available in print and as Kindle version.
Amazon.com
Amazon.ca
Amazon.co.uk (Affiliation link)
Amazon.de (Affiliation link)
(As far as possible, we link to affiliate programs and the income goes to charities supported by Mr. Armitage. Please also consider the affiliation links at RichardArmitageNet.com for Amazon U.S. and U.K., where the income also goes to RA’s charities.)
Book-Recommendations
In the last weeks, we have been presenting diverse artists to you, which specialised in pictures, animations, paintings, scrapbooking and drawings.
We also got contributions in form of
texts and books.
To present those adequately, especially at a time, where everybody is preparing for Christmas and is choosing presents for loved ones, we decided to do book presentations, to give you the one or other tip or hint for a present or your own reading list.
We already had interviews with wonderful authors and researchers like Prue Batten, Isolde Martyn and Dr. Ashdown-Hill. We will include their publications in our presentations and hope you will enjoy our recommendations and find them useful and an enrichment for your reading list.
We encourage you to use the buying options with Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk offered by
where income from the affiliation is donated to Mr. Armitage’s recommended charities.
The embedded links here either go to links of the authors, their publishers or our affiliate programs with Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.de and are intended to give you access to further information regarding the presented and reviewed books. Should income be generated, it will be donated to charities recommended by Mr. Armitage.
More book presentations and reviews will follow in the next days. To give you a preview and first tips of interesting books regarding the topic of our heart, please see the following selections:
King Richard III in Historical Research
Fiction
For a full list of our reviews and recommended materials, please visit our Richard Resources and Products pages. (Will be updated and extended on a regular basis.)
We wish you a nice and relaxed pre-Christmas time and happy preparations!
