Looks from a quick buzz through the online papers that the Times has the scoop on the rediscovery of the true location of Bosworth Field, where Richard III came to a sticky end…
Summer of Blood
“Combines zest and flare with an accute historical intelligence.Bold. Surprising. Unputdownable” David Starkey
The Author
Dan Jones was born in 1981 and graduated from Cambridge with a First in History in 2002.
~ Read more
I was amused by this bit in the report:
“In those few frenzied moments the future of England — and by extension much of the world — changed course. Bosworth became the bridge that links the Middle Ages to modern Britain and ushered in the dynasty of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. If Richard had killed Henry there might have been no English Reformation, no Church of England and no Elizabethan golden age to inspire artists, explorers and empire builders.”
Or, ummm, there might have been more or less exactly those things. I know The Times might be read by people who still think history is determined largely by blood-blooded chappies who “make things happen, by God!” but I tend to subscribe to that bolshie stuff about multiple causes and varied courses of history.
Even more amusing was this curmudgeon from the comments on the story:
“Apart from the silver boar (which seems to good a relic to be true), there is no evidence to say why it is this field and no other. Where is the evidence?”
Right. So apart from a piece of evidence that is crystal clear (and so can be dismissed as “too good to be true”), there’s no evidence. Oh, apart from the topography, the pollen evidence and all the other data the story mentioned. Delightful.