While browsing information on Brat Farrar, I discovered that its author, Josephine Tey, had written a "crime novel" about Richard III (published in 1951). This is it.

It was a big story, back in 2012, when Richard's body was found beneath a car park in Leicester... In 2015, these remains were reinterred in Leicester Cathedral. Benedict Cumberbatch -- who, it turned out, was a relative of Richard's (but then apparently so are most of the rest of us) -- read a poem... That same year (I can't believe it's so long ago...), we spent a day in Leicester, checking out the Visitor Centre, the tomb, and other aspects of this very attractive city.





So, my interest in this novel was definitely piqued.

Inspector Alan Grant features in a number of Tey's titles. But in this one, he's stuck in bed recovering from the leg and back injuries that he sustained on falling through a trap-door in pursuit of a crim.

Struggling to keep boredom at bay (and cruelly disparaging of the modern novels that well-wishers have brought him), he leafs through a series of old portraits gifted by his actress friend, Marta Hallard, and finds himself intrigued by Richard III's likeness, because it doesn't seem to fit with the monstrous, nephew-murdering reputation that has been handed down through the ages.

So Grant sets out to find out what happened to the nephew princes, and who dunnit. It's a surprisingly interesting read, given that our hero is stuck in his hospital room throughout (he is just about back on his feet again by the very end). He starts by reading all the published sources that his entourage can round up, and then teams up with Marta's friend Brent Carradine, who goes burrowing into the more obscure sources at various archives. So Tey builds up the evidence layer upon layer, and each piece of new information becomes quite exciting.

The only confusion arises from the British nobility's remarkable lack of imagination where it comes to naming their children... There are just way too many people called Henry and Richard and Elizabeth and Margaret. You yearn for a Sheena or a Barry somewhere along the line... I was reduced to downloading a family tree, but even so it doesn't have all the detail the novel mentions.



I won't recount Grant's deductions blow by blow, but he comes to the conclusion that "from the police point of view there is no case against Richard at all". Henry VII, on the other hand -- the first of the Tudors -- looks more than a bit dodgy. Whereas Richard had an "excellent record in public service, and good reputation in private life", Henry was "an adventurer". Whereas Richard did not stand to benefit from the crime, Henry very much did. Whereas Richard's right to the crown was unassailable, Henry "had no right whatever".

Tey's argument, as it stands, is very convincing. And it was highly influential. According to Sara Polsky, writers and historians had been arguing since the 17th century against the wholly negative depiction of Richard III popularized by Shakespeare. But it was Tey's book that sparked general interest. She continues: "The novel was immediately popular when it first appeared..., and as its reach grew so did the pool of potential Ricardians... It was the first in a wave of novels, plays, and biographies sympathetic to Richard that appeared in the fifties and sixties."



A big plank in Tey's argument is that the version of Richard that became so familiar to us essentially derived from hearsay, rather than from contemporary accounts. Worse, the hearsay was politically motivated, aimed at shoring up the legitimacy of Henry VII.

I'm not equipped to evaluate the sources she uses, and the question of Richard's guilt or otherwise has never been 100% laid to rest. Author and public historian Alison Weir, for example (a dyed-in-the-wool, Richard-is-guilty person), claims that a lot more sources have been uncovered since the novel was published, and they don't support Tey's conclusions. History professor Tim Thornton also defends Sir Thomas More's formative account as "a narrative constructed by an author who had access to men and women whose witness takes us very close indeed to the dramatic events of 1483, and the death of the princes themselves".

If you're wondering who the "daughter of time" is -- well, it's "truth". So maybe time's gestation period has not yet been long enough. Or maybe time's daughter is stillborn in this instance. Who knows if the puzzle will ever be solved to everyone's satisfaction.



What I find interesting, though, is Tey's critique of the way history is written -- decades before post-modernism took "history" by the shoulders, and gave it a good shaking.

On the question of "facts", for example, we have this exchange between Grant and one of his nurses:

"Who said [the princes] were smothered?"
"My history book at school said it."
"Yes, but whom was the history book quoting?"
"Quoting? It wasn't quoting anything. It was just giving facts."

The self-arrogated but spurious authority of some "history" is also speared by Grant, who is incredulous that "people have been pointing out for three hundred and fifty years that Richard didn't murder his nephews and a schoolbook can still say, in words of one syllable and without qualification, that he did".

On sources, we have Carradine saying this: "The truth of anything at all doesn't lie in someone's account of it. It lies in all the small facts of the time. An advertisement in a paper. The sale of a house. The price of a ring... The real history is written in forms not meant as history."

And on cognitive bias, we have Grant's cousin Laura observing: "It's an odd thing but when you tell someone the true facts of a mythical tale they are indignant not with the teller but with you. They don't WANT to have their ideas upset. It rouses some vague uneasiness in them, I think, and they resent it."

When I was doing my Master's degree, one of my professors used to comment that there are only two types of history: History that is aware of itself, and history that isn't. The post-modern challenge certainly had its own problems, but its influence probably inspired more history that comes in the "self-aware" category.



I like Tey's writing. True, she is a bit hard on her women characters, and she's a bit classist (Mrs Tinker, who "does" for Grant, for example, is your classic rich person's poor person -- dropped h's, ancient handbag, creaking corsets, and all). But Tey has a nice turn of phrase, and manages to be amusing without crossing over into archness (I can't define where that line lies, but I'm very sensitive to it).

And it was nice to have some reminders of journeys past. We visited East Stoke earlier this year. We saw the site of the Battle of Stoke Field, an uprising against Henry VII, and we saw the stone in the graveyard commemorating the death in battle of John de la Pole, a nephew of Richard III. The following month we found ourselves in Peterborough. It was during Richard's lifetime that Peterborough Cathedral was sacked by a Lancastrian army. And then there are "the Pastons, chatting indestructibly through the centuries," as Tey so nicely puts it. We visited Paston, their village of origin, during our covid exile in 2020.

Inspector Grant initially struggles to get to grips with the Wars of the Roses: "Armies marched and counter-marched. York and Lancaster succeeded each other as victors in a bewildering repetition. It was as meaningless as watching a crowd of dodgem cars bumping and whirling at a fair." From what I've read, I know how he feels. But I'd like to pursue the theme a little further, when -- God willing -- we make another visit to England next year.