A thrilling day

I have to confess I did not set my alarm for 4 a.m. Feb. 4th to listen to the actual broadcast of the DNA results for Richard's bones. I am on vacation in Mexico after a hectic two months of theater and "Royal Mistress" editing and needed my sleep!

But when I did get my lazy bones out of bed, it was to see a barrage of emails and Facebook postings telling me that yes, indeed, that skeleton found under the car park in Leicester was Richard's. I almost wept. To be honest, my fellow Richard III Society and I were convinced the results would be positive, but there was nothing like hearing it for real.

One of the emails was from a research assistant at BBC's The World distributed in the US by Public Radio International. She wanted me to call and chat about what finding out it was Richard meant to me as a RIII Society member and an historical novelist who writes about Richard and the Wars of the Roses. I have to admit I used to work at a PBS station in Northern New York, where, at the same time, Marco Werman, The World's anchor, was also working. We have stayed in touch over the years and he knew of my obsession with Richard!

Within the hour, I was doing an interview with Marco, and that afternoon I got to live-stream the program and listen to it in my adorable little casita in San Miguel de Allende. Suddenly, the number of hits to my website tripled! All very exciting, especially as "Royal Mistress" is coming out in May in which Richard is a major character. Marco kindly gave me a plug for the book at the end of our interview. It all helps ;-)

So what does hearing the news that we have found Richard's ill-treated body mean. For me personally, it means that when they decide where to re-inter his remains, there will be somewhere for me to go and pay my respects next time I am home in England. But more important, it means that this global news story may re-kindle interest in this much-maligned king, and others will realize that the history books have defamed Richard over the centuries and spread the word. And finally, perhaps the portrait painted by Shakespeare will be recognized and appreciated as a brilliant role for a male actor in a dramatic but fictional play.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Missing Princes Project: Update!

Image
  Perkin Warbeck or Richard, due of York? E arlier this year, I encouraged you to watch The Lost King , a movie about finding Richard III's bones under a car park in Leicester in 2012. It certainly generated renewed interest in England's maligned (by Shakespeare et al) king.  At the end of November, another astonishing revelation about Richard emerged, spearheaded again by Philippa Langley, the discoverer of the location of Richard's bones. Not satisfied with that incredible success, Philippa then launched The Missing Princes Project, a research project attempting to solve the centuries-old mystery of what happened to the princes in the Tower, who disappeared in the summer of 1483, never to be seen again. You ask the majority of English people if they think they know what happened to them, and, up until November, I guarantee you 80 percent would have said, "Oh, Richard III murdered them." Even I, who is one of Richard's greatest champions, believe someone (but
Read more

Ode to a grandson

Image
  Leo turned into a teenager last week. Ah, you say, so into a kid who will now only answer in monosyllables when he's not giving you sass; get miffed if you tell him to turn off his phone/tablet/gamer; and generally behave as though you, his parent or grandparent, knows nothing at all about anything. But Leo is not that kind of kid; and for us as grandparents taking him on his first trip abroad to a non-English speaking country, we found this out on the very first day of his being in our care for the first time without his parents. (That's a lot of firsts.) We flew overnight on French Bee from Miami to Paris Orly and landed on June 6th--at the start of a one-day General Strike. Ack! Les Français et ses grèves. We had no idea what to expect, but that things were not as they usually are on a Tuesday in June became evident as we sat on the plane for an hour and a half waiting to disembark. Our jetway was not ready (not enough personnel willing to work) and so portable stairs had
Read more

My Driving Life

Image
  I learned to drive in 1965 on my father’s 1952 pristine Bentley along the winding, one-and-a-half-wide lanes in the Surrey hills. As if the size of the car and the lack of rack-and-pinion steering wasn’t hard enough to handle, the ankle-high gear shift tucked between the front seats was often the stick that broke the camel’s back for me.  Invisible gear shift between seats My father, an erstwhile British army colonel, was not the most patient of teachers, and I was glad of his additional gift of six driving lessons at the local school, with a mild-mannered, retired schoolteacher in Leatherhead. Amazingly, I passed the test on my first try, much to my siblings’ amazement, who were convinced that at 21 I was not much use at anything except a good cry. (A slight exaggeration, but you get the picture of a slightly overwhelmed middle child.) It was not the norm in England in the 1960s for every member of a household to own a car. So, I had to beg my mother to loan me her much more versati
Read more