Richard III at Leicester

I'm not as young as I used to be - I know that now. Today I had planned a short drive, 40 miles, to Leicester to see the Richard III exhibition, then back and out again this evening, less than 20 miles, to Milton Keynes. I had to cancel the second event as the first wiped me out. So was it worth it?

The exhibition is at the Guildhall Museum in Leicester, which is definitely worth a visit in itself if you happen to be in the area. The Guildhall is adjacent to the Cathedral, which while rather nice inside is not any more nice than a good few parish churches I know, and a good deal less nice than some. It is the least attractive Cathedral I know, even allowing for my personal fondness for Southwark owing more than a little to it being the place I was ordained. As the majority of Bonnie's photos are of the cathedral, that tells you something.

I suppose the timing was bad - and that isn't a reference to the joke about Richard IIIs body having been there for 500 years and we turned up not long after it was moved. It was a cold day, and it was half term. Those are both bad conditions for standing on stone flagstones queueing for an hour without access to refreshments.

If the exhibition had been scintillating, that would have made up for it. "Wow, I'm glad I saw that - well worth the wait!" - I know I've had that experience in the past. But it wasn't. It was nice to see, interesting if you happened to be passing, and, crucially, also had not seen either the broadcast of the press conference announcing that the bones were indeed Richard III, or the 90 minute documentary on Channel 4 giving a pretty full account of the quest. There was only two things in the exhibition that had not been on one or other of the TV programmes, and obviously, in a small exhibition, a great deal was left out that was in the programmes. One of those things was a photograph of a mediaeval flag stone recovered from the long-destroyed Grey Friars church. The other was some feedback about modern scoliosis sufferers.

There were some nice informative displays - one of the skeleton particularly drew my attention - laid out on a table-size touch screen. I thought it was a good display - but there were children and teenagers milling around the table/screen, and as fast as I touched it and brought up a display I wanted to study, one of these youngsters touched it somewhere else and changed it.

I thought there were a lot of things that could have been done that maybe will be when the exhibition is reincarnated in the future. For example, something could be made of the Shakespearean exploitation of Richard's deformity to underwrite his villainy  First, he did not have a hunch back. Second we do not know, but it seems likely the extent of his deformity would have caused him pain, none the less he was known before he became king as a wise and fair administrator and valiant in battle. Deformity is not a sign of God's judgement on evil, nor a reason for condemnation of bullying.

Then there is room for a discussion of the Princes in the Tower issue - there is no evidence, but a statement of the arguments why one might think the popular rumour true, and arguments why not, would not be out of place. Prejudice enters into most opinions, and some rational evaluation might have made that point as well as suspending judgement in the particular case.

Another interesting, and related, issue is the strength of Richard's claim to the throne. If the Princes were illegitimate, and certainly when they were dead, he was, I think the rightful heir. So how good is the claim they were illegitimate? The issue is phrased with a judgemental tone "Richard had Parliament declare..." But if they were illegitimate Parliament was right to so declare and might have done so of its own initiative. In any case, how strong was Edward Tudor's claim? If Richard and Edward had gone before a court of law to settle the issue instead of slugging it out in Bosworth Field, what was the likely outcome?

Surely, too, there was room for a chart showing the genealogical evidence - why the modern descendants are known to be such, and how the DNA analysis works. I'd also have been interested in the work still unfinished on the male line (the modern descendants are of Richard's sister) - why is it more difficult? when are the results expected? and what might we expect to learn?

No doubt space was the main constraint. The exhibition area is small, and a lot of space was given over, correctly, to the project, leaving less for Richard.

In short - I'm glad I went. I wanted to see the exhibition. I knew it was not at the archaeological site, but I had hoped to see the actual excavation. Instead that area is closed to the public. But if I hadn't gone I'd have regretted it. But as I did go, I wish I had planned it better and chosen a warmer day without half term and therefore a shorter queue. I'd still have my feeling that the exhibition left me no wiser, but I might not have got home half dead.