Gone Medieval - Finding Richard III

Episode Date: December 17, 2022

In recent weeks, cinema audiences have been enjoying The Lost King, which tells the story of the efforts of amateur historian Philippa Langley to find the remains of Richard III - lost for more than 500 years - beneath a social services car park in Leicester.In this episode of Gone Medieval, Matt Lewis meets Philippa to hear the story of this amazing discovery.This episode was edited and produced by Elena Guthrie and Rob Weinberg.We've also been nominated for Best History Podcast and the Listener's Choice Award at the Signal Awards! We need your help though - it would mean so much to the whole Gone Medieval team if you followed this link to sign up and vote. Thank you!If you’re enjoying this podcast and are looking for more fascinating Medieval content then subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter here >If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android > or Apple store > Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. The film The Lost King has hit cinemas in the UK and will have worldwide releases soon. Now, you might all know that I am vaguely interested in Richard III, so I probably couldn't let this one pass by. And I'm delighted to be joined by Philippa Langley, whose research and drive led to the search that resulted in the astonishing discovery of a medieval monarchs lost remains under a social services car park in Leicester

in 2012. We're going to explore how that project came about. So thank you very much for joining us, Philippa. Hi, Matt. Hello. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. I guess the first obvious question that you must have been asked a million times by now is how did you first become interested in Richard III? Where did this start? It was a book. I was going on a holiday. I wanted something to read and picked up this book by an American academic. And I thought this will be interesting because I'll read about this monstrous, murderous, tyrant man. But the book was very interesting because it's by Paul Murray Kendall, who looked at the contemporary source materials from Richard's own lifetime and spoke about a very different kind of man. And he produced overwhelming evidence

for a man who was loyal, brave, devout. and just. So this was a 180 from Shakespeare, and that absolutely fascinated me. And how did that evolve then into kind of a longer term interest in Richard III? Were you driven to find out more? How did reading a book on holiday develop into a much deeper interest? It was a sequence of events, because funnily enough, going on that holiday, when I read the book, coming back on the flight, I got Beijing flu and was pretty ill. And then I developed ME, and then I couldn't work nine to five. So I then had to be at home and I had to find another job, something else that I could do in my own time. And it was Richard's story that inspired me to take up screenwriting because it was this juxtaposition between Shakespeare, the dramatic narrative and the actual historical narrative.

Because I couldn't understand, why are we always rolling out Shakespeare's Richard III? Why is it never the historical Richard III? So this became my thing. This became what I wanted to do. So I was researching Richard's life and really enjoying it, really fascinated by it, because the more you research him, the more you find out, his story is utterly compelling. It's a story where fact is stranger than fiction. Speaking from my point of view, I always find it like going into a dark old room that nobody's really been in and you're kind of pushing your way through cobwebs. And the more you're, push away, the more you realize there is in this room, it's like we've had this veil put in front

of us of Shakespeare's Richard the 3rd. And I was actually writing something for history hit this week, looking at times that Richard the 3rd has been portrayed on screen. And I think of the 10 I looked at, eight of them were essentially Shakespeare, or variations of Shakespeare. And the average age of the 10 actors who'd played Richard was 47, you know, when this is a man who died at 32. So so often we get Shakespeare's old man on stage, which is so very different from the normal Richard. So like I say, I always find it like pulling away at cobwebs and the more you pull away, the more you reveal, a bit more light gets shed on something and you go off in different directions and it just keeps me hooked. So it sounds like it was the same for you. Absolutely. So go Harry Lloyd

in the Lost King film. That's all I can say, young man. He's dragging down the average age. So when did you start to investigate where Richard the Third's remains might be? How did you become interested in where his body had ended up? I visited Lester because I I'd gone to Bosworth for the first time because this was where the screenplay for Richard was going to end. So I went to Leicester, because members of the Richard the Third Society said, look, Richard left for Bosworth from Leicester, although there was going to be nothing in the film for Leicester. So I went to Leicester. And I wanted to look around the Greyfriars precinct because this is where we thought Richard had been buried. So I ended up in this car park, the social services, well, I went to the new street car park first where there's a piece of medieval wall.

didn't really get any sense of the past there. So I then found another car park directly opposite, and this turned out to be the social services car park, but was really drawn to go in, but I was drawn to a Victorian wall, a red-bricked Victorian wall, and walked straight in and had what I can only call an intuitive experience where I felt I was walking on Richard's grave. I know how odd that sounds, but I went home and told my friends and family about it. They were actually really open-minded and said, look, you know, maybe it means something. So the following year, I went back to the northern end of this car park because I wanted to check if it was real. And I had the exact same experience in the exact same space. But this time I saw a letter R on the tarmac,

clearly for reserved parking. But that was the moment my research focus changed from Richard's life to his death and burial. So that was in 2005 when I made that deliberate decision to change my focus. And as you became more interested in this aspect of where Richard the Third's grave might actually be, what obstacles do you come up against? I mean, how well recorded was his burial? There's obviously local legends about what might have happened to his remains. How did you deal with all of those problems and obstacles? So, you know, 2004, 2005, 2006, there was a lot of obstacles, huge. obstacles because I'd had this experience in the northern end of this car park. But in Leicester, the two local historians, David Baldwin and Ken Wright, had placed the lost Greyfriars Church

in Greyfriars Street under buildings and a road there under a bank building. So the Greyfriest Church would have been wholly inaccessible. And then in terms of Richard's grave, the overwhelming belief with historians and in Leicester was that his remains. had been thrown into the river soar after the dissolution of the monasteries. So the church was inaccessible under a bank building and road, and Richard's remains were not there. They were in the river. So I began to think, well, this is just a non-starter, because a plaque had been put in Grave-Rice Street to show where the location of the grave was,

and I think this was based on David Baldwin's work, and the society put the plaque up there. So I kind of started to step away from it, but then the most amazing thing happened. And I think this is what has been so intriguing about this whole journey is at every point where I think I'm going to give up, something happens and stops me giving up. And in 2007, there was a commercial archaeological dig right where everyone thought the church was in Greyfriars. Building was being demolished to make way for a block of flats. and they found absolutely no evidence for the Church of the Greyfriars being in this location. This was huge for me because that was in the northeast corner of the site.

So what this now strongly suggested was that the Lost Grey of Fry's Church must be further west. And further west was the northern end of the social services car park. So all of that just began to align. So what do we actually know about Richard's burial in 1485 when he's killed? at the Battle of Bosworth, we have records that say his body is taken back to Lester. How much did we know precisely about what had happened to his remains after that? They'd been put on public display. They'd been put on public display and then two days after the battle, they were reburied with

little solemnity and we've got that from a number of sources. So we knew that Richard had been reburied and a number of sources tell us that it was in the Friars Minor or the Grey Friars. And we have a later source, John Layland, who actually went and saw King Richard's tomb in the Grave Friars in Leicester. So it seemed to be quite secure in our assessment that Richard had been buried in the Grave Friars and had been given a monument there. And there's a record from the time, which comes from a legal case, would you believe, which discusses payment for the making of King Richard's grave in 1495. So that all seemed relatively secure in

terms of what we were looking at in the research. So you were fairly sure, or everyone was fairly sure he'd been buried at the Greyfriars in Leicester. Everyone was fairly sure where the precinct of the Greyfriars was, but what was in doubt was where precisely within that precinct the church had been located and where it was potentially believed to have been turned out not to be the case because of this archaeological work that showed up no traces. That must have kind of reopened the whole thing for you. It did hugely and I think it was after this dig in 2007 that my research really wrapped up a lot. Then I started to find things. There was an account from John Nichols, an 18th, 19th century local historian from Leicester. And he said that the Church of the

Greyfriars was situated to the south of St. Martin's Church, which is now Lester Cathedral. And this seemed to have been repeated by quite a few. I think John Throsby said the same, even though I think Throsby was one of the ones who thought that the king's remains were in the River Soar, he said that the church was situated to the south of St. Martin's Church. So it seemed to be coming quite clear for me that it was a situation of sort of church road, church. And that looked to be quite compelling because that then meant that the church was in the northern end of the social services car park. And I'd found a lot of sort of rough plans and maps and there'd been quite a few things published in the Richard the Third Society.

And I think one of the most interesting ones was way back in 1975. A researcher called Audrey Strange had written an article on the Greyfriars and Audrey had said that in her estimation she believed that the church and the potential grave of King Richard was situated somewhere in the three car parks, the open spaces that were in that central area of Leicester, of which one of these was the social services car park. But then in 2008, there was another important milestone for me in my research, because Annette Carson, she's the author of The Maligned King and the recent Mancini translation, she published the Malign King in 2008. And she was the very first person, the very first author, historian, researcher, who actually named

the social services car park. And Annette, in her research, felt that the church and the grave was in the social services car park. Because Annette, similarly to Audrey's Strange, similarly funnily enough to David Baldwin, and to John Ashdowne Hill, did not believe the bones in the river story, because they all just said, there's no evidence for it. So that was a huge moment for me, because I very much respect Annette Carson's research. And I think what was really fascinating for me at this time, looking at everything, I couldn't find any research that challenged this view, that challenged the Church Road Church and potentially the northern end of the social services car park. So it was a lot of research beginning to come together to all point to this car park that you were

interested in as well. And I think it must be something about researching. I mean, if anyone hasn't read any of Annette Carson's books, please read them. because if you want to know anything about Richard the Third, they are fantastic. But it's something about studying Richard the Third, I think, that teaches you or forces you to question everything because so much of it can be easily pulled apart as a Shakespearean sort of drama rather than history, that you reach the point where almost everything you read about Richard the Third, you think, why do we think this is true?

That's, I guess, where you come from with the Bones in the River story. Why do we think this is true? Well, it turns out someone a couple hundred years later might have said it, but actually nobody at the time was saying that this had happened. So I think it's interesting that studying Richard's life kind of led to almost driving the study of his death and where his remains were because it forces you to question everything. Is that fair? Absolutely. There's so much mythology around Richard III and mythology that's been taken as fact and truth for centuries. So it's the questioning of Richard's story, Richard's life and times, that I find so utterly fascinating. And I think

you do too, Matt, because I've clearly read your books as well, and I know that you question at every point. I think it's an important part. The study of Richard III has really driven home for me that you need to go to the contemporary source material, and if it's not there, you need to question why we believe it and why we think that way. Just to give you one story that might make you laugh, I was in Leicester a day or two ago, and I met the mayor of Leicester Sir Peter Salsby. I hadn't seen Sir Peter for a long time. And he was the landowner who gave me permission to dig the car park. And he reminded me of a story and I'd totally forgotten about this. And he said, Philippa, do you remember when you came and pitched to dig our car park? And I'd just become

mayor. And obviously he could say yes or no to this project in a heartbeat. And he said that he went to see a guy called Andy Keeling, who was the finance guy at Leicester City Council. And he said, Andy, you know, what do you think of this project? This woman's brought this project. She wants to dig our car park. What do we think about this? And apparently they'd both laughed and said, you know, well, it's just a bit mad, isn't it?

And they both said that the only bones she will find are those of a Kentucky fried chicken. So that gives you some idea of the strength of feeling, particularly in Leicester, in terms of where the church was and where the king's grave was. And indeed, if he was still in his grave, if everyone believed he'd been thrown into a river. Yes, because strangely enough, the bones in the river story was placed onto the exhumation licence, which was three days before we exhumed Richard. So it was a very, very powerful story, very powerful.

And how did you begin to bring together or coalesce a project to complete this? So I know that the Looking for Richard project was a thing that involved yourself, Annette Carson, who we've mentioned, John Ashdown Hill, who we've mentioned, Dave and Wendy Johnson. who are also part of this story. How did The Looking for Richard Project come about and how did people get involved in that? Yeah, that came about in February 2009 because I invited John Ash Downhill

to come and give a series of talks to the Scottish branch of which I was then currently the secretary because I wanted to hear about his DNA discovery. And John had made this in 2004, 2005. I'd learnt about it in 2005 when he was published. his research. And I think you cannot underestimate the importance of his discovery, because for me it was the groundbreaking discovery. Because my experience, when I went to pitch this project in Leicester, they were not really supporting it until I brought in this aspect, until I said

that we had Richard the 3rd's mitochondrial DNA sequence. So if we found any bones that could be potentially his, we could potentially identify them. And that's when people, then really got interested in the project. So this was huge and this was all done by Ashton Hill. So he came up to Edinburgh to give us this talk. But interestingly in 2005, I had contacted him because I wanted him to get in touch with Time Team, you know, the archaeological show that used to be on British television. I said to him, look, I really believe that Richard's remains are in the social services car park and I'd love to do a time. team dig and you've discovered Richard's mitochondrial DNA, can you write to them? So Ashdown Hill did

because he too was interested in the social services car park and he was interested in the new street car park as well. And it was a shame because they came back and said the car parks are too big so our three-day format won't work. So it was when I eventually met John because we'd done all of this via email. So when I met John in 2009, that was another turning point because I mentioned to John my hypothesis that I felt the church was in the northern end of the car park and he absolutely agreed that this was possible because we'd both read Audrey Strange's work where she spoke about how the friars need to be beside a major road way, a major thorough way, so that they could preach to the local populace. So he said that really adds up.

And there on the same day was David and Wendy Johnson. And I was actually sitting with David and Wendy Johnson in the Cram and Inn when we discussed this. And I said, look, it's time to go in search and it's time to begin the search for Richard. And Wendy and Dave were sitting on the table with me at that point, and they became founder members straight away and said that, yes, we must do this. And the other person who was sitting on the table with us, who's sadly no longer here, Dr Raymond Bord. He was friends with a lawyer in Leicester

who was great friends with the mayor of Leicester. So Raymond said, I'll try and put you in touch with the mayor of Leicester. And that's really how the Looking for Richard Project got underway. Was that the moment when you felt that you were ready to make an approach to Leicester? So I guess you've got to work out who owns that car park, make an approach to the landowner,

and try to pitch the idea that you want to dig up their car park to look for a medieval monarch who's been missing for 500 years. Were you fairly confident by this point that you might be in the right place, or were you still fairly unsure, was there an element of it, could be one of several places, but this is where we think is most likely? I think for me, the research looked really good for the northern end of the social services car park, but there were the three car parks that Audrey Strange had identified. So in my mind, I thought we have to GPR all three.

areas and go from there because obviously you cannot be 100% with research. You can say it looks good but until you cut the tarmac you never know. So that's why I thought the GPS survey was really important. And that's ground penetrating radar, sorry. Yes, ground penetrating radar. Absolutely. So what I did initially was I contacted John again, John Ashdown Hill, by email. And I said, look, do you want to contact the people in Leicester to find out if a search for Richard might be of interest. And John said, yes, I'll do it. Because obviously John was Dr. John Ashdown Hill. He was a historian. He had more clout to his name. And plus he'd made this discovery. So I let John do that. And John had thought that he'd sent his email to the City Council. He'd actually sent it to the

archaeological group called University of Leicester Archaeological Services. He'd sent it to them, but got no response. So that's when I decided that I needed to bring something pass. powerful in, and that's when I decided to bring television in, because I thought, if we've got TV cameras following us the whole time, then whether we find something or not, we could offer something to Lester to say, look, we could put you on the map. So I waited, John then said he was writing a book called The Last Days of Richard III, where he was going to publish all of his DNA discovery. So I thought, I'm going to wait for that, and then I will get the rights to John's book and then I will use that for a television documentary. So John published in, I think it was 2010,

and I then thought, okay, who do I go to with this? And a production company called Darlow-Smithson Productions produced this incredible program in July 2010 called World War I, Finding the Lost Battalions. And it's where a amateur historian called Lambis Enzlio had done his. his research to say that he felt that he knew where the burials of this lost battalion was in Frommel in France. And so this documentary went in search with him. And he was absolutely right. And they exhumed 250 remains of World War I soldiers and reburied them, you know, with dignity and honour. So it was the most beautiful programme. So that was my template. So I went to Darlest Misten's and said, I want to do the same thing but for Richard III. They loved the idea.

And that's when I went straight to Lester City Council at that point to their chief executive officer. And Sheila Locke. And luckily she was a lady with vision. She liked it. And she came back and she said, yes. She said, we can't pay for it, Philippa, but we will help you facilitate it. And that's when it began. And that was September 2010.

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How does the actual dig come together then? Who else do you have to get involved? I mean, presumably you have to find archaeologists to do the digging for you. You have to find funding at this point as well. How do you go about sourcing all of that sort of stuff to bring the project together? Yeah, because I applied for and was granted three permissions by the landowner, Lester City Council. One was to commission and fund the GPR survey.

The other was to commission and fund an archaeological dig. the third one was to bring in a television documentary crew to film the entire thing. So you're right, I needed an archaeological company willing to do the work. And I'd been in touch with Oxford archaeology. I'd been in touch with Glasgow archaeology at the university there. And they were all pretty clear that they said, look, you know, it would be interesting to do a dig in Leicester, but you probably need local advice because that will be key to helping the dig.

So I actually rang the University of Leicester. services. Luckily, I got in touch with one of their co-directors, Richard Buckley, and he was interested enough to give me a meeting. So I went down, this was in January 2011, and I then went down to see him in March 2011, and what Richard did was he did a map analysis, and I'd heard about this map in the city archives that had a potential location of Robert Herrick's garden. because in 1612, the Wren family account had said that the father of the famous architect, Sir Christopher Wren, had gone to Leicester to visit the Herrick family and had seen a pillar in the garden, a three-foot stone pillar that said, here lies the grave of King Richard III, sometime King of England.

So that strongly suggested that in Leicester the grave was potentially still there in 16, 10, 1612. So what Richard Buckley did was he got out all of these maps for me to see so I could see the change in land use over time. And it was utterly fascinating because he started with Thomas Roberts's map of 1741. And this seemed to show this area of where Herrick's mansion was and potentially where his garden was laid out. And in this garden there was four pathways leading to this circular area. and I was in touch with Wendy Johnson about this a little later and she said, well, doesn't that sound like where the three-foot stone pillar would be?

You'd have all pathways leading to where a king's grave is. So I thought she's got a really good point here. So I asked Richard Buckley to overlay Thomas Roberts' ancient map from 1741 with the modern map to see where that would lay. And Richard Buckley said, well, look, this old medieval plan. that we have. It was a very rough sketch of where the Greyfriars and St. Martin's was, but he said, let's try it, so we did it. And it seemed to show that that location was right next door to the northern end of the social services car park, but in the school playground. So we were in the right

ballpark, if you like. So this was really, really exciting. So once I had the archaeologists on board, Richard Buckley was very interested in friary churches, particularly medieval church. So he was very happy to come on board to search for the church. So with him on board and him saying that he was willing to be commissioned with the desk-based assessment, which was the prerequisite before the dig, I then had to fund that. And that's when the Richard III Society came to my aid. Because this was about £1,000 that I needed. And I applied for a bursary, and I was granted the money, and so I could pay for the desk-based assessment. But then it was the big one, because then I needed to fund the dig itself. And by this point, Richard Buckley had done a costing. It was about

35,000 pounds, which I suppose today that doesn't sound like it's a huge amount of money. But back then, and in the middle of a huge recession, when people were losing jobs and there was just no money anyway, it was huge. But this is when a lady called Sarah Levitt at Leicester City Council came to my age. She was head of arts and museums, and she was my lead partner in the dig. And she said, look, Philippa, why don't you go and see an organisation called Leicestershire Promotions? It's run by a guy called Martin Peters. They promote Leicester and Leicestershire. So if they know that there's going to be a potential television documentary around this, he might be very interested.

So I did. July the 21st, I remember the day well, 2011, went to see Martin Peters. And I remember it well because I sat down and pitched the project to him and he was absolutely fascinated by it. He also knew about the bones in the river story, but he loved the idea that a documentary was going to be there. And he said, how much do you need, Philippa? And this is when I thought, oh, well, I've just got to give it to him and hope for the best. So I said, 35,000 pounds, and that will be three trenches. And he looked back and sort of looked at me and he said, I could give you twice that now. He said, you're funded. I'll fund it. So we were funded. And it was just remarkable. I went to a coffee shop and I rang Richard Buckley. and I said, are you sitting down? And he said, yes. And I said, we're fully funded. So that was huge. So the dig was then planned for April 2012. So we were up and running. So all I had to do was the GPR survey,

which I then funded through private investors and Dr. Phil Stone of the Society put in £1,000, which is great, because it cost me over £5,000. So I commissioned that from StrataScan, specialist company, and I got permissions to GPR all of the three car parks. But the results weren't great. It looked like there was a lot of made-up ground, so there was no sign of the church or the Greyfriars anywhere that we could see. So this was a big moment because the TV company were now getting cold feet. It's looking like a total wild goose chase, and Leicestershire promotions are now getting cold feet, then Leicestershire promotion said, look, if the TV company don't give you something firm by the 9th of March 2012, we're withdrawing from the project. And that's what's happened

on the 9th of March they withdrew. And I lost all of the funding. And the project was pretty much cancelled by then. Ouch. I mean, that must have been a pretty terrifying moment. And frustrating, having got that far and that close, you know, a month before the digs due to start to lose all the funding, how do you bring it back from there? Oh, yeah. I mean, that was a really really dark moment for me because by then, you know, it had been nearly eight years and I was utterly exhausted. And I remember going home and thinking, oh, well, that's it. I can't do any more. It's not meant to be. We're in a recession. It's not going to happen. But it was my John, the father of my children, who, you know, I'm separated from. And he was the one. He said,

look, you've done 99% of the work. He said, don't give up now. It's always darkest before the dawn. So he said, fight, try and get new funding in. Go for it. And I thought he's right. So I did. And the first person I called was Dr. Phil Stone, the then chairman of the rich of the third society. And Phil agreed to put in £5,000 of his own money. And he said, right, there's £5,000. That's your start. Go and get the rest of the funding in. But you've got that. That was really a huge kick for me. And I then went back to Lester. I went back to Leicestershire promotions who said they would be willing to put in 15. I went to the University of Leicester and they said they'd be willing to put in 10,000, which was great. So we were virtually there because Richard Buckley would slightly alter where the trenches were going to be so we could get more parking in the car park. So we now needed about £32,000. And I had, I think it was Leicestershire adult schools came in with some money.

so we were there, we were done. It was great. And Sarah Levitt had given us new dates for the dig, which was the August bank holiday weekend. So we were ready to go, but then at the 11th hour, Leicestershire promotions couldn't give me the full 15. They could only give me five. So I'd lost that 10,000 pounds with literally only a few weeks to go. So I approached Phil Stone and asked for permission to do an international appeal to Ricardians around the world. And luckily by then, Annette Carson was a member of the Looking for Richard Project, and she's an internationally award-winning copywriter. And I asked Annette, and she said, let me write it for you. Let me write the appeal, and you send it out, and hopefully fingers crossed, we can but try, but we've got very little time,

and we don't know. So she put it together. I emailed it out, and within moments, I remember it was morning I was taking the boys to school and I sent the email out with the appeal and I was getting the boys ready for school and I could hear my computer pinging straight away and so the emails literally started coming in straight away and they started coming in from all around the world from everywhere it was just unbelievable and within a couple of weeks we were fully funded in fact more than fully funded. They gave more money than I needed. So they saved the dig. It's an incredible story of looking like it's going to happen and then it falls apart and then you have to recover from that only for something else to fall apart, but something else comes along that saves it. I mean,

I'm saying that like it happened in a vacuum, but clearly you and other people were driving all of this to make sure that it happened. How did you feel on the actual day when the dig started when you actually broke ground on that car park? That must have felt incredibly rewarding after eight years of work, but it must have also been slightly terrifying that you might find nothing still. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. But I thought, whatever we find, small, large, whatever, it will help our research. It will move our research forward. So, yeah, standing in that car park and watching the spoil heaps get larger and larger as the digger was beginning to dig and dig down and dig down, it's an overused word, but it was surreal because I'd dreamt about it for eight years. And here it was,

it was happening. And I think what gave me great comfort was that the more the digger dug down, I thought, well, they can't stop it now. They can't run in and stop it now. So even that first day, I was thinking any minute, someone will run in and say, no, stop it. We've changed our minds. And then I think for the first discovery to be lower leg bones, to be found right in my hotspot, that was a huge moment, an absolutely huge moment. so it wasn't for the archaeologists, because they do this all the time. They find bones on sites. And so I remember, you know, I was saying, look, they're in an east-west direction. Is this a burial? Could this be really important? And the archaeologist said, look, Philippa, we don't know if we're in the Greyfriars precinct yet.

We haven't found any evidence for that. We don't know where the medieval layer is yet. We don't know what antiquity these are. They could be Georgian. They could be Victorian. We don't even know they're a burial yet. Yes, they are two legs that seem side by side in an east-west direction, but we can't tell you it's a burial yet. So they had to literally cover them up and move on. And I absolutely understood that. But that northern end of the car park was my main focus. And I know I'd, as the client, Richard Buckley had kept me informed about where all the trenches would be and we kept talking about where he was going to position them. And I said to him, look, if you're not going to put a trench in the northern end of this social services car park,

how much will test pits be? Because this is my key area. And I want this area to be looked at. So tell me how much test pits will be because I have a little bit of money left. But when he finally showed me the final sort of layout for the trenches, it went right over my hot area. So I was really happy because I didn't need to pay for any test pits. I guess it's a fairly famous part of the story.

but how close were Richard's remains to that painted R on the car park that, you know, was for reserved parking but which had drawn your attention? Was he directly underneath that or just very close? No, he wasn't underneath. I think he was about three feet away. He was in the next parking bay. But the weird thing is, when I walked into that car park, because I walked from the entrance to this red-bricked wall,

so it was actually right there that I had the intuitive experience. So it was the letter R that was to the left of that. So when I think about it now, I think I actually was right on top of his grave when I had that experience, which is surreal. And obviously, you know, the rest of the story is legend. Richard III is discovered. DNA work proves that the remains are those of Richard the 3rd. He's reinterred at Leicester Cathedral. When you reflect on that achievement, that eight years of work that went into that and the dig that happened and everything that's followed on from that,

that's led to Richard III being in a marked grave in a cathedral. How do you feel about that now? I mean, you must be incredibly proud of what you achieved. I'm hugely proud of everything that was achieved. I think it was the most fantastic project in all respects. The identification work was crucial as well, and that used Ashdowne Hills discovery. And Michael Ibson, you know, his DNA was an exact match with Richard III, an absolutely exact match.

I mean, you couldn't really make it up. But I think I'm absolutely hugely proud that it. we now have his grave, he's now been honoured, he's been buried with respect and honour and dignity, and the king has returned to us now. He's back with us. So in the movie The Lost King, Richard the Third makes an appearance a kind of way, I think, to externalise your inner monologue so that we can understand what you're thinking at each stage of this process. But I wonder what you think Richard III would make of all of the attention that he still gets five centuries after his death. What do you think he would make of all of this interest? You know, he was king for two years and died on

battlefield. How do you think he feel about people still talking about him and searching for him five centuries later? I think Carol Ann Duffy's poem is what I think. I think it's such a beautiful poem. I don't know if you've seen Harry Lloyd's rendition of that poem. It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. He does it remarkably. And I think there's a two-part answer to this question because I think for me, the line that is key in that poem is grant me the carving of my name. So his name is now back with us. It's there. He's a King of England and he's with us once again. But I think, funnly for Richard, the way I see it, in terms of what we know about this man from his own lifetime, I think it's the line that says, I once dreamed of this, your future breath in prayer for me. That's the line that sums up Richard the third. And I think for him to have known that we would pray for his soul over 500 years later and have his grave and honour him in.

this way. I hope that that would be the thing that would really, I think, mean something to him. Incredible. It is, I keep saying it, but it is just an incredible story. What's next for Philippa Langley? So you've found a king. How do you top that? What's next? Well, I started a new research initiative in 2015 and it went live in 2016. It's called the Missing Princes Project. So it's looking into the mystery of the princes in the tower. As you know, Matt, you've written the book about this. It's what happened to the two. There were Richard's nephews, the sons of Edward VIII. They were said to have been murdered in the Tower of London by Richard or on his orders. So I think it's one of these incredible mysteries, but again, there's so much mythology around it.

So I thought it's time to, excuse the pun, but to really dig deep into this one. And what I can tell you is that next year we're going to be making the most incredible announcements. It's our five-year report and we hope it's going to be incredibly exciting. That is a juicy teaser and I certainly hope you'll come back to us next year when you can reveal a bit more about that. I'm certainly keen to hear all about that. I would love to. If you invite me back on, I will come back and tell you all about this. Definitely. So the answer to how do you top finding a king is to find two princes maybe, hopefully fingers crossed. Yeah, fingers crossed.

That's been absolutely incredible. It's been fascinating to relive the story of how you delve through history, through mythology, and things that are accepted as fact and how easily you can prove that they're not as certain as they seem and that your persistence and tenacity in pushing on through that and not sitting down every time you were knocked over, but getting back up again and carrying on with this project, it's been incredible to hear how many times it could have failed, but how many times it was also pulled back out of the fire to eventually reach the point where we now have a grave in Leicester Cathedral for Richard the 3rd. So thank you so much for sharing all of that with us. Thank you, Matt. Thanks for having me. Another fascinating aspect of the story of Richard

the 3rd's remains follows on from the discovery by Ulas and includes the DNA work done by Professor Tori King of the University of Leicester that really helped to prove that the remains were those of King Richard the 3rd. If you'd like to know more about how DNA work done, analysis works, you can hear Tories speak to Dallas Campbell on the patented podcast, also from History It, in an episode entitled Forensics DNA. You can join Dr Kat Jarman on Tuesday for another brand new episode, and don't forget to also subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and tell your friends and family that you've gone medieval. If you get a moment, please do drop us a review or rate us anywhere that you listen to your podcasts. It really does help new listeners to find us out.

If you're enjoying this and would like a little bit more medieval goodness in your life, please subscribe to our Medieval Monday's newsletter. You can find the links in the show notes below. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis, and we've just gone medieval with history hits.