Nico Narrates Audiobooks: War of the Roses: Part Deux

9:31 AM, AUG 18, 2013 • BY GEOFFREY NORMAN

Richard III, last of the Plantagenet monarchs, was KIA in the

Battle of Bosworth Field. That would have been 528 years ago,

come Thursday, August 22. The King is famous for providing

Shakespeare with the line "A horse, a horse. My kingdom for a

horse." And if you haven't heard Al Pacino deliver it, in the film,

Looking for Richard, then you really must.

The King's body was, evidently, buried in haste and only recently

unearthed. And the fight has been resumed. Only now, the

weapons are legal briefs rather than broadswords. As Sam

Jones reports in the Guardian:

A high court judge has given permission for

descendants of Richard III to challenge plans to

rebury the king's remains in Leicester rather than

York, but counselled both sides against engaging

in an "unseemly, undignified and unedifying" legal

rerun of the Wars of the Roses. Richard's twisted

and hacked skeleton was unearthed in a Leicester

council car park last September, 527 years after he

was killed at the battle of Bosworth Field and hurriedly

buried in the church of the Greyfriars.

The judge may desire that things be handled in a

dignified manner but this is unlikely since, as he

observed in his ruling:

... there were economic issues to be considered

in terms of prestige and tourism. "The benefit in terms of

prestige and increased tourism to the city or place or

institution which eventually secures these royal remains

is obvious," he noted. "It is said that the footfall at Leicester

cathedral has increased 20-fold since the discovery."

Well, as an American writer famously put it:

"The past is never dead. It's not even past."

War of the Roses, Part Deux? Bring it on.

Nico Narrates Audiobooks