Two stories about Richard III

By -
In honor of the very exciting confirmation that Richard III's remains have been found (and by the way I'd like to thank Livius Drusus at The History Blog for being so informative about it!), I though I'd revisit a couple of fun mysteries: the classic Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, and Elizabeth Peters' homage, The Murders of Richard III.

Grant's portrait of Richard III
In The Daughter of Time, Inspector Grant is laid up in hospital, unable to move and bored stiff.  A friend suggests he study a historical mystery and gives him a pile of portrait prints to keep him entertained--Grant has an interest in faces.  One face grabs his attention, and he wonders: how can a man who looks so careful and virtuous be one of the worst murderers of all time?  The portrait, of course, is Richard III and Grant spends his time going back to primary sources, reading up on history and realizing that there is no evidence to convict Richard III of murdering his nephews (Tey ignores a rebellion and didn't know some other things, so don't take this as gospel.  No one knows what happened to the princes in the Tower).  The whole book is filled with invective against what Grant calls "Tonypandy"--using legend and propaganda as history (as, for example, in the Boston Massacre).

It's a great book and very fun to read, but don't be too swayed by Tey's partisanship for Richard.  I'd like to note, by the way, that she falls for some Tonypandy at one point, referring to "the mad Juana of Spain" -- and as we now know, Juana wasn't mad at all, though I can't blame Tey for not knowing that!


The Murders of Richard III riffs on Tey's famous novel.  Jacqueline Kirby, Elizabeth Peters' wonderful librarian detective, ends up at a country house weekend with a pack of pro-Richard enthusiasts.  They repeat the same arguments that Tey used, and they have also taken on the parts of historical characters.  Someone starts attacking people (non-lethally), re-enacting the deaths of 500 years ago--so that for example the fellow playing the Duke of Clarence, who "drowned in a butt of malmsey," is knocked out and awakens upside-down in an empty wine barrel.  As panic sets in, Jacqueline is the only one to keep her cool and see through the pretense to the real danger!  Good stuff.

Also there's a nice line that I like very much:  
"I know a little bit, but not enough, about everything," said Jacqueline.  "I'm a librarian, remember?"
Which pretty much sums up why I'm a librarian--I like knowing a little bit about everything, but I haven't got the attention span to know everything about anything.

Comments

  1. HelenFebruary 14, 2013 at 11:49 AM

    I love books about Richard III and The Daughter of Time is one of my favourites. I haven't read the Elizabeth Peters book yet, but it sounds fun!

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousFebruary 17, 2013 at 3:17 PM

    Oh how I do love these two mysteries. I particularly like it that Jacqueline references The Daughter of Time.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Alex in LeedsFebruary 28, 2013 at 3:16 AM

    I've read both and enjoyed them a good deal, they work very nicely as companion reads I think. :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of...
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the s...
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he ...
Read more