Video

Video material about Richard Armitage

Defence Costs More Than Dig

 
With King Richard III, the good and the bad always are so close together.
For Leicester to win the court battle while losing money, much more money than the initial dig for King Richard III had cost, certainly is a truth fully in the tradition of King Richard III’s reign.
 

 


 
 
Videos by the University of Leicester about the revelation of the results from the High Court (23.05.2014):
 

 
 

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:

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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)
 


 

To Celebrate King Richard III

 


♛ King Richard III ♛


 

 

 

Pre-Announcement:

To celebrate King Richard III, who started his reign as King of England 530 years ago, and actor Richard Armitage, whom we want to help into his reign in the role as King of England, the KRA website is again planning a
“King Richard Armitage Week 2013”
from the 21st to 28th of August, 2013
.

Contributions and Support are very welcome.

 

Historical Speculation and Research

 


♛ Roman Nail & King Richard III ♛


 
Wild speculations are not as un-historical as you might think.
Perhaps my wild speculation I start here might show you that the ‘expectations’ of the researcher and here especially the historian have quite some influence on the outcome of the research.
In a way, one finds what one expects to find and searches for.
 
The find of King Richard III’s remains shows this excellently and why in all the research and university methodology, Philippa Langley was so very crucial and important for the outcome.
 
There are exceptions with chance finds, but even here you need to know what importance the things might have you stumble upon, whereas most artefacts are lost, when not found by someone who understands their value for research and history or even understands that they are artefacts and not e.g. a rusty clump of earth hindering you to plant something or a bothersome stone.
 
So now, let us have a closer look at my speculations about the ‘Roman Nail’ and the position King Richard III’s body was found in:
 

ATTENTION:
Please continue reading the following speculations only if you have a rather strong stomach and can stand anatomical and biological details after death.
If not, please start below with the “King Richard III”-News and the newest articles from the press.

 
The position King Richard III was found in his grave, makes it likely that his hands had been tied together when he was positioned into the grave. After 3 or more days of exposure of the corps to the public, death rigidity would have faded by now and the hands otherwise would have slipped from this unnatural position he was found in.
 
But why did the friars dump him so unceremoniously?
Depending on the temperature (August can be warm and humid), the body would have started to show the early signs of decay and might have already exuded a strong smell, if not even his stomach accid might have already broken through. For certain, his heavy head wounds would have started to smell abominably and might have been pestered by flies and … (I leave the rest to your gruesome imagination).
But the reasons for dumping King Richard III quickly in his grave might not only have been pressure by the new King Henry VII, but quite understandably also human reactions and necessities.
 
The more it is praiseworthy that they did take his body and buried him in a significant spot in their church.
 
 
The one aspect which had always astonished me about the burial was the ‘Roman Nail‘ in close proximity to King Richard III. It had been found so close to him, that at first it had been reported as an arrowhead potentially lodged in his back close to his spine.
 
But why would a ‘Roman Nail’ turn up in a grave for a hurriedly dumped king?
 
Either it was by accident and the monastery was based on earlier Roman foundations, which lie eaxctly as deep as the friars dug the grave. This for me is a rather weak argument, as in this case other artefacts of the time would show the level of earth as a Roman foundation, but those signs are missing or at least not reported so far.
 
Or, the friars intentionally put the nail into the grave together with the King.
Potentially used as reliquaries, the Roman nail could have had religious importance, especially when believed to have had significance or a connection to the crucifixion of Jesus, but even symbolical, the importance and religious connection still is strong, especially when the nail really derives from Roman times. For example the Pope till in our days wears a ceremonial robe with a broad band where Roman nails are embroidered in, to show the wounds Jesus had to bear for us.
 
The Roman nail could have been used as reliquary to ease the way of the deceased king, but also could have been a symbol for his wounds received for his people.
In both cases, it might have been a very valuable and holy symbol of his time, given to him by the friars in honour and true sympathy for King Richard III.
 
 


♛ King Richard III ♛


 
Historians begin their research by speculating about the importance of certain facts found in King Richard III’s grave, like his curved spine and the consequences they had for his life.
From speculation the following sound research can reveal, if actual events and mentions in resources give foundation to the speculations and prove them as having been actual fact.
 

 

Dig Some More …

 
… not only regarding King Richard III, but also in regard to Richard Armitage.
I certainly would like to discover more about the story and context of the place where King Richard III was buried, but I also would like journalists to dig a bit deeper in their interviews, especially in one of the latest, where Mr. Armitage mentioned his interest in King Richard III:
 
Richard Armitage about King Richard III:

[…] it’s an interest, it’s a passion of mine […]

 
7th April, 2013 – MagicFM, Rick Astley
 
The full interview transcript is on RichardArmitageCentral.co.uk and the audio compilation on RichardArmitageNet.com.
Full Richard III passage of the interview is here on the KRA website.
 
 


♛ King Richard III ♛


 

  • ThisIsLeicestershire.co.uk: Richard III: Team plan new dig at Leicester car park, by Peter Warzynski (01.04.2013) – Finally! Have been waiting for this news impatiently and hope it is not an April’s fool joke, though perhaps bad timing, as the University of Leicester had a joke on their website on the 1st of April that they would search for the remains of King Richard IV, now that King Richard III is found. (Universities joking about their research? – Certainly a new aspect of learning.)
  •  

  • BBC News: Richard III letter fetches £35,000 at auction (03.04.2013) – Signature of King Richard III has been sold for £ 35,000. Buyer is still unknown.
  •  

  • Birmingham Post: The life and death battles of Richard III, by Steve Allen (12.04.2013) – Good overview of the won battles of King Richard III, over greed and other hindrances, but also about the lost and still undecided battles.
  •  

  • BBC Radio 3 – Drama on 3: Shakespeare’s Richard III (14.04.2013, First broadcast February 2004) – ATTENTION! Available online only for 5 more days!
  •  

  • FrontierLeicester (YouTube): Video Interview with Jo Appleby, by Emma Anne James (from September 2012, published: 04.02.2013) – I had not seen the following interview before and though it represents the status before the confirmed identity of the found skeleton to be of King Richard III, it is still interesting to see the presentation of all the different aspects of research.
     
  •  

Reminder: Poll about the last burial place for King Richard III and adequate procedures to find it is still open !
Please give us your opinion!
 
 

Richard III – Impressive School-Report

 


♛ King Richard III ♛


 

 
 


♛ Battle of the Cities ♛


 
The Battle of the Cities is far from over, now with a new player in the battle, the “Plantagenet Alliance“:

 
 

The King is Found – Long Live King Richard

 
 


♛ King Richard Armitage ♛


 
News concerning the film project(s) right from the interview of Philippa Langley with Ben Jackson (BBC Radio Leicester, 07.02.2013 after 3 p.m.):
 
Philippa Langley:
 

He [Richard Armitage] is pitching it [the Richard III movie project] in LA as we speak.

 

People have said he [Richard Armitage] is too tall, but he has just played a dwarf.

 
The interview should be ready for download or to re-listen on the BBC Radio Leicester website shortly.
 
 


♛ King Richard III ♛


 
YouTube video of the research results revealed at the press conference on Monday, February 4th, 2013, uploaded by the University of Leicester.
“The Search for King Richard III – The Scientific Outcome”
 

 
(Source: University of Leicester )
 
 

 
 


♛ Battle of the Cities ♛


 
I had so much hoped that the War of the Cities could come to a good end which would satisfy all involved cities. Now it seems, the fighting finally comes to an end.
I hope all involved parties, fiercely fighting for the King, will find benefit in the final decision in favour of the Cathedral in Leicester.
 
Here some news reports and the breaking of the news about Leicester Cathedral:

 
 

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KRA NewsStream


January 23, 2022

Royal Family: The deadly sickness that killed Henry VIII’s brother and thousands of others before vanishing without a trace (by Bea Isaacson, MyLondon.news)


January 8, 2022

Can new evidence clear the name of Richard III? (by Chris Lloyd, Darlington & Stockton Times)


December 29, 2021

Did Richard III actually save the boy king he’s accused of killing? (by Lydia Starbuck, Royal Central)


April 23, 2021

Steve Coogan movie The Lost King begins filming (by Comedy.co.uk, British Comedy Guide)


January 31, 2021

Barnard Castle boars date back to King Richard III (by Andrew White, The Northern Echo)


January 12, 2021

Alternate history: what if Richard III had won at Bosworth? – Professor Emeritus Michael Hicks interviewed by Jonny Wilkes (by Jonny Wilkes, Professor Emeritus Michael Hicks, BBC History Revealed)


September 11, 2020

Steve Coogan and Stephen Frears to collaborate on The Lost King (Film-News.co.uk)


April 9, 2020

Steve Coogan confirms Richard III movie ‘next year’ (by BBC East Midlands, BBC.com)


November 1, 2019

Richard III and the Battle of Bosworth – By Mike Ingram (HeritageDaily)


October 8, 2019

Painted as a villain – how the Tudors regarded Richard III (by Christina J. Faraday, APOLLO.The International Art Magazine)


 

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