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2005) was also set up during the 20th century in order to rehabilitate Richard and to honor his memory. This Society is based in the city of York, where following his death in 1485 it was proclaimed, that "King Richard, late reigning mercifully over us, was.... piteously slain and murdered, to the great heaviness of this city". The Society possesses a small database of books and archive material compared to the Richard III Society.

Popularity

Richard appears in the 2002 List of "100 Great Britons" (sponsored by the BBC and voted for by the public), alongside such others as David Beckham, Aleister Crowley, and Johnny Rotten. The BBC History Magazine lists him under "doubtful entrants, based on special interest lobbying or 'cult' status", and comments: "On the list due to the Ricardian lobby, but a minor monarch".

Fiction about Richard III

The foremost work of fiction regarding Richard III is, of course, the eponymous play by William Shakespeare. See the separate article for details.

A lasting mystery surrounding the accession of Richard was the disappearance and presumed death of Richard's nephews, known as the Princes in the Tower. One of the most readable accounts of the evidence on all sides of the question is Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time, written in 1951 (when some of the sources now available had not yet come to light). Another extremely rich view of the reign of Edward IV and Richard III is The Sunne in Splendor, by Sharon Kay Penman. An award-winning novel published in 2003, The Rose of York: Love & War by Sandra Worth, also presents the account of Richard III from the Ricardian viewpoint. Worth argues that Richard III's contribution to shaping a just society by improvements to the legal system was buried by the Tudors because it conflicted with the image of a villainous and hated monarch that they wished to present in their attempt to minimize hostility towards their regime.

The American Branch of the Richard III Society carries out its own review of all the suspects in the case of Richard III, in "Whodunit?" in the online library at http://www.r3.org/bookcase/whodunit.html (external link).

Another fictional representation is the 1939 film Tower of London, where Basil Rathbone is Richard and Boris Karloff his evil henchman. Interestingly, while this Richard is clearly the monster of Tudor legend, most of his deformity appears to be transferred to Mort, who almost resembles "Igor" of Frankenstein legends!

Additionally, a secret history of Richard III is presented in the British sitcom Blackadder.

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