Today saw the interment of the Richard III, some 530 years (I think) since his ignominious death in battle in the Wars of the Roses. It is remarkable that his skeleton was ever found, seeing that someone had inconveniently built a car park over the spot, and that they could prove it was him, and that the general public has pretty much taken him to its collective heart. Admittedly, some members of the general public have raised issues of princes in towers and the like, and clearly Shakespeare did not have that high an opinion of him, but that only goes to prove that history is rather messy at the best of times, and we frequently have difficulty in knowing what to believe, in separating fact from fiction.
In a similar vein, today also saw the first televised debate of the forthcoming general election, with David Cameron and Ed Miliband not having a head-to-head debate but having two separate debates, one after the other. Which seemed something of an anticlimax, compared to the livelier confrontations of the last campaign. And rather like deciding whether Richard III was a Good King or a Bad King, it ends up being a fairly subjective judgement of which politician is worth voting for. Presumably neither will be particularly fondly remembered in 500 years' time.
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