Philippa Langley
Autor de The King's Grave: The Search for Richard III
Obras de Philippa Langley
Etiquetado
Conocimiento común
- Fecha de nacimiento
- 1962-06-29
- Género
- female
- Nacionalidad
- UK
- Ocupaciones
- screenwriter
historian - Organizaciones
- Richard III Society
- Premios y honores
- MBE (2015)
- Biografía breve
- Philippa Langley is a Scottish-born screenwriter and historian best known for her contributions to the discovery and exhumation of the lost grave of King Richard III in 2012. She is the secretary of the Scottish branch of the Richard III Society. She raised money for and organized the Looking for Richard project and the excavation of the site of the former Greyfriars monastery in Leicester at which the king was found nearly 530 years after his death. She contributed to a documentary about the project, The King in the Car Park, and is the co-author, with Michael K. Jones, of The King's Grave: The Discovery of Richard III’s Lost Burial Place and the Clues It Holds. In 2015, she was made a member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).
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Estadísticas
- Obras
- 4
- Miembros
- 377
- Popularidad
- #64,011
- Valoración
- 3.8
- Reseñas
- 24
- ISBNs
- 17
- Favorito
- 1
In any discussion of a book about Richard III, one always needs to reveal one's starting opinion. So here's mine: I'm pro-Richard. He was a good duke, the strongest support of his brother Edward IV as king. And if we set apart his first few months of usurping the throne, Richard was a good king, too, promoting justice and education -- among other things, he produced legislation promoting the production and importation of books. He was, potentially, great. But the way he took the throne was a problem. My personal guess is that the death of Edward IV caused him a temporary loss of mental stability, resulting in the usurpation and the murder of the princes.
I'd really like to have an excuse to find a better explanation. I would.
But I also have to take the data seriously. Langley's incessant habit of taking one minor fact, making a major inference, treating that inference as fact, and then making more inferences on that basis and treating those as fact renders this volume pretty close to fiction.
Worse, the way she presents her case is stunningly dull. It's as if she's burying you in irrelevancies so you don't notice the dirty trick she pulled on you.
Case in point: The Precontract. This was the whole basis of Richard's claim to the throne. Shortly after Edward IV died, a bishop named Robert Stillington came forward to claim that Edward IV had promised marriage to Eleanor Talbot Butler, and that this rendered Edward IV's later marriage to Elizabeth Woodville invalid, and hence all of Edward's children by Elizabeth illegitimate. If true, the precontract would justify Richard's taking the throne. The question is, was it true.
What evidence does Langley offer? On pp. 119-131, she lists a number of sources that say that Richard asserted that there was a precontract. But this was not in doubt. Richard's official claim to the throne is the Titulus Regius. This survives. No other evidence is needed. Langley claims to be following police procedures. If you have a tape recording of someone saying, "I did this," you don't need other testimony saying, "I heard so-and-so say this." The direct evidence is sufficient.
So Langley's many secondary sources saying that Richard said there was a precontract are completely irrelevant. What matters is whether Stillington's claim was true or not. Langley doesn't even look at this issue; certainly she does not bring us new information. All she's done is muddy the waters.
She does this endlessly.
So what actual evidence does she have? Archival work in Europe has turned up a couple of letters referring to King Edward V, and to his brother Richard Duke of York. Langley calls these "Proof of Life" for each of the princes, on which basis she claims that Richard III did not kill his nephews.
Of course, her "Edward V" is actually the pretender everyone else calls Lambert Simnel, and her Richard is actually the pretender Perkin Warbeck. Naturally various people referred to them by royal titles, because they were trying to use them to overthrow Henry Tudor. In other words, her "proofs of life" are in fact exactly what we would expect to see. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Langley's evidence is on the low end of ordinary. Would it have justified a couple of scholarly papers to add to the debate and see if other evidence could be found? Absolutely. Does it justify a claim that the Princes were not murdered? Not for a split second. The weight of evidence is still strongly against her. Yet she never even admits a shade of doubt.
It's important to remember that, in 1485, if the Princes had been alive, it would have been to Richard III's great advantage to display them alive. He made no attempt to do so. The logical explanation, much as I hate saying it, is surely that they were dead.
The number of ridiculous statements that Langley comes up with to support her opinions are just stunning. For example, on page 290. she claims that foreign princes wouldn't support pretenders. Um... wasn't Henry VII a pretender? Under no legal argument was he the successor of Edward IV, or of Edward V, or Edward the Anyone; at best, he was Duke of Somerset. But the King of France sicced him on Richard III.
Langley is so lacking in self-awareness that she actually says on page 311 that "We do not have the luxury to make preconceived judgments" -- this from a person whose self-evidet goal is to make Richard III innocent whether he's innocent or not. In a further bit of muddy-headedness on the same page, she says that "where coincidences occur, you must investigate." No, where actual coincidences occur, you must not make anything of them. Where inconsistencies occur, then you must investigate.
One may hope Langley's project can turn up more useful evidence about the Yorkist period. But one must also hope that it is assessed by serious scholars, not by Langley. I am incredibly glad to be done with this piece of absurdity. It made me want to pound my head against the wall.
Like Langley, I would like to think of Richard III as a good but maligned king. But I would rather do it based on facts, not on what I want to be true.… (más)