The Last Plantagenet King

Last night I watched PBS's Secrets of the Dead program about the exhumation of Richard III's skeleton. The curvature (scoliosis) of his spine is almost exactly duplicated in the body of a modern young Englishman named Dominic who participates in reenactments of the battle of Bosworth Field.

Shakespeare's and others' portrayal of Richard as a hunchbacked, murdering monster was almost certainly born of propaganda by the Tudors, 15th-century usurpers of the British throne. Contemporary accounts of Richard's reign show him as a good king and brave soldier. This PBS program is worth watching, if they show it again.

I had two questions: 1) How did they know it was Richard? and 2) Where exactly is Bosworth? Contemporary accounts said that he was buried at a certain friary, and that's where the bones were found. And I found Bosworth on a Google map.

Josephine Tey's historic novel, Daughter of Time, debunks the Richard-as-monster myth, and is a very good read.

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The LAC poetry group meets tomorrow night, and I'll probably read my Wizard poem.