Monday, 4 February 2013

Richard III confirmed as found

It seems that it took them as long to explain it as it did for them to find him, but the news is that the remains of the English king Richard III have indeed been found in Leicester. Two maternal lines of descendants, and four descendants on the male line were utilised to match samples of both mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA that were found from the skeletal remains - and the bottom line is that it's him.

The full story is at www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-21203814 and www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-21063882

UPDATE: From February 8th there will be an exhibition in Leicester on the discovery, in the Guildhall.

UPDATE: For the BBC War Walks documentary on Bosworth, made in 1997, on which yours truly was the researcher, visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/war-walks-bosworth.html.

Richard Holmes does Richard III - priceless! :)

UPDATE: The ex-TV producer in me sincerely hopes room is found in the Tower of London for Channel 4 after tonight's unbearably painful documentary The King in the Car Park. I tweeted the following earlier: One of the greatest archaeological finds in centuries matched only by one of the worst archaeological documentaries in years. I completely stand by that as my review.

On the plus side - check out Debbie Cruwys' blog post at http://cruwys.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/richard-iii-king-is-found.html. Unlike the TV prog, it's actually interesting!

Chris

Pre-order my new book, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet, through Pen and Sword (30 April 2013), or purchase early at Who Do You Think You Are Live 2013 in London. For my other genealogy books, please visit  http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html; whilst for my online Scottish based genealogy courses please visit the Pharos Teaching and Tutoring Ltd site.
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2 comments:

  1. Debbie KennettTuesday, February 05, 2013 12:08:00 am

    Chris, Thanks for the mention. Leicester Uni don't yet have a Y-chromosome sample from Richard III. They don't yet know if they will be able to extract any nuclear DNA. The Y-DNA testing they have done is on male-line descendants of the Duke of Beaufort who, in turn, is documented to be a male-line descendant of Richard III. If the researchers can extract Y-DNA then, assuming there has been no hanky panky in the intervening years, the results should match. I couldn't agree more about the Channel 4 documentary. I wanted the science and Richard III not Philippa Langley's emotional journey.

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  2. MervTuesday, February 05, 2013 7:55:00 am

    I totally agree with your assessment of the documentary. I gave up on it, I thought I'll be better checking out the details on-line. Thanks for the link to the blog.

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