A historian gave the most British look of despair when someone screwed up Richard III’s birthday at his reburial

The Independent (March 27, 2015)

 
A historian gave the most British look of despair when someone screwed up Richard III’s birthday at his reburial by Christopher Hooton –

So much effort was undertaken for the re-burial of King Richard III. Still they got King Richard III’s birthday wrong in his eulogy in Leicester Cathedral.
Here a quite understandable reaction by Dr. John Ashdown-Hill, who did such extensive research about King Richard III and who enabled the finding of the grave, to be embarassed that even such a basic fact about the king was ignored.
In the debate about the finding of King Richard III, it certainly does not help, that some try to make fun of the historian Dr. John Ashdown-Hill, who did the necessary background research to enable the find. The University of Leicester, pressed into the research, did not find the king. They only provided the research equipment, personnel and know-how for coping with the search results, but not the necessary optimism, the belief, the pre-determined area where to dig and the enormous work to achieve the acceptance by the authorities to allow the dig in those areas that was necessary that the king could be found. Without Dr. John Ashdown-Hill’s pre-research and Philippa Langley, the king would have remaind where he was for over 500 years. To ignore that fact is to ignore the real circumstances of the search.