RICHARD III - SOME TOUCH OF PITY AND THE SEARCH FOR HIS RESTING PLACE IN LEICESTER

1. Rhoda Edwards, Some Touch of Pity. Book Review

“No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. But I know none, and therefore am no beast.”

(William Shakespeare, Richard III)

Another well written historical fiction novel about Richard III. Although this book is out of print  I managed to get  a used copy through Amazon.com and at a very special price. It is not my first Richard III novel since I started my quest for the real King. It is my fifth novel since, a couple of years ago,  I  joined the many loyal Ricardians who want to wipe off the stained reputation the Tudors stuck on Richard III after his defeat.

In 1976 Rhoda Edwards (author of another Ricardian novel, Fortune's Wheel)  won the Yorkshire Post’s Best First Work Award for this novel, Some Touch of Pity (The Broken Sword in the US edition) which was  her first work of historical fiction about King Richard III.

The peculiarity of Some Touch of Pity is that it  is  presented as a series of first person narrations of the key events in the last two years in the life of Richard III (March 1483 – August 1485)  We follow the compelling accounts of Lady Anne before and after becoming the Queen of England; King Richard himself; the King’s physician, Dr William Hobbes ; Sir Francis  Lovell, Richard’s best friend;   Robert Bolman a clerk in the Privy Seal Office; Lady Elizabeth, daughter of King Edward IV (King Richard’s niece and future wife to  Henry Tudor); George Stanley, Lord Strange; and finally a Squire of Sir William Stanley.

RICHARD III URGENT ARCHAELOGY APPEAL

What follows is an appeal in aid of the archaeological search for the lost grave of King Richard III from Philippa Langley. Philippa  is a screenwriter and founder, in 1999, of the Scottish Branch of the Richard III Society. Concurrently with this archaeological project she is preparing a script about the real Richard III. Here's what Philippa wishes to inform Ricardians and  friends about: 

After the battle of Bosworth, Richard III was interred in the choir of Greyfriars church in the centre of Leicester. Ten years later Henry VII had the remains placed in an alabaster tomb where they remained until the Dissolution of the Monasteries. In late August 2012 archaeologists are due to excavate the site which, after exhaustive investigations, is believed to be his most likely last resting place, in the Choir of the former Church of the Greyfriars. 

New map regression analysis and Ground Penetrating Radar have helped to pinpoint the location, and it is here that the first-ever search for the grave of an anointed King of England will begin.