Nicola here, reflecting on the emotional effect that people and places in history can have on us. I’ve been a Ricardian, a supporter of King Richard III, since I read The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey when I was about 12 years old. The much-maligned English monarch was a shoe-in to be my first adolescent crush; he was brave, loyal and devoted to the North of England, where I grew up. I joined the Richard III Society and became enormously partisan and completely unable to entertain any other point of view about Richard other than that he was a total hero.
Fast forward six years and this became a little bit difficult. I was at London University, studying medieval history. Partisanship wasn’t really encouraged; independent thinking and the weighing up of the historical evidence was. And so began my long on/off relationship with Richard III and historical truth. Twenty five years later I studied Richard again for my MA dissertation in the context of why we need heroes. Regardless of my views of his guilt or innocence over the murder of the princes in the tower, one of the most infamous episodes in English history, I was certainly still very interested in him!
The discovery of Richard’s body buried beneath a modern day car park in the city of Leicester riveted people around the world. It 
was the kind of story you simply could not make up and whilst it might not have answered the big questions such as the fate of the princes, it did tell us a lot about Richard himself from what he ate to how he died.
In 2014 the Richard III Visitor Centre opened on the site of his original burial and the following year he was re-buried across the road in Leicester Cathedral. Since then it has been my intention to visit the site of both of his graves and a couple of weeks ago I finally did. Leicester has certainly changed since the days when I lived there before I was married! The old part of the city centre that I remember is now largely pedestrianised, allowing you to wander around and admire the medieval buildings.
There’s also a Richard III walking trail that takes you to a lot of ancient sites in the city that have a connection to the King. I made Angus, my pet dog, explore the trail with me; I’m not sure that he found it as interesting as I did but he dutifully accompanied me to the castle and the magazine gateway and Blue Boar Inn (now the Leicester Travelodge!)
The Visitor Centre is brilliant, encapsulating in one exhibition the complicated history of the 
Wars of the Roses and how Richard came to be king in the first place. It’s quite Games of Thrones in style. Upstairs is an even better exhibition showing all the steps in the re-discovery of Richard’s body, the archaeological dig, the forensic examination, the DNA testing matching him to a living descendant. There is also a fascinating analysis of how Richard’s reputation has changed over the years; the strength of the Shakespearean myth and the gradual revision of views about him. It’s pretty balanced in it’s approach.
Finally, at the end of the tour, you get to see the place where Richard was originally buried. A glass floor covers the grave site. I’d been pretty much able to look at the rest of the exhibition with an objective eye but when I saw the tiny space into which they had bundled his body after Bosworth, I did feel pretty emotional. Luckily there was a steward on duty, which stopped me from crying, but only just!
Across the road at the cathedral it’s a different story. Richard’s tomb is perfect, in my opinion, simple but elegant, and standing beside it is a very moving experience. I particularly liked the anecdote later told by one of the vergers, that a couple of weeks after the king had been re-buried, a small child was looking at the tomb and said she particularly liked the sword on it. Everyone was puzzled because there was no sword engraved on the stone but the girl pointed out that when you looked at the cross cut into the top of it you could see the shadow of a sword. She was right! If you stand at the end of the tomb and look along the deep cut of the cross, you see the shadow of a sword. This was completely unintentional when the tomb was carved and the effect was created by the lights in the cathedral roof. They had to be exactly in the right position to cast that shadow and no one had set it up deliberately. Spooky!!
I found the whole day quite emotional and it reminded me of how strong the ties are that bind us to the people and places of the past. We all have our own heroes and heroines and they mean a lot to us. There are also places as well as people that are important or special to us and they will always resonate with us. Who is your historical hero? Do you feel an affinity with someone from the past, or with a particular historical place?
