The course of history changed right here...

New trail depicts impact of death of Richard III at Bosworth

- EMMELINE SAUNDERS

His brutal death at the hands of Henry Tudor's forces was immortalised by William Shakespeare, with one line seared into our collective memory: "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!" And now a new sculpture trail is set to shine a light on this seismic moment in English royal history: King Richard III's downfall and the rise of the Tudor dynasty.

In a quiet field 15 miles west of Leicester, Richard the Usurper, as his enemies branded him, was defeated in the final chapter of the War of the Roses, the civil war that raged between the houses of Lancaster and York in the second half of the 15th century.

With those rumoured last words inked in history or imagined by Shakespeare, Richard was the last English monarch to fall on the battlefield, his head stoved in by a long-handled axe known as a halberd.

His death on August 22, 1485, ended the Yorkist line and the Middle Ages - and ushered in the new era of Tudor rule.

And this month visitors can immerse themselves in the story on a 12-mile trail around rural Leicestershire, taking in ancient churches, sleepy villages, windswept fields, award-winning pubs and the historic town of Market Bosworth.

Historian Philippa Langley, who led the archeological project that discovered Richard III's remains buried under a car park in Leicester in 2012, tells the Mirror: "Bosworth is one of those moments where history turns on a sixpence.

"Arguably Bosworth was a paradigm shift, just as the Battle of Hastings had been in 1066. Which was the only other battle where a King of England was killed." P rior to Bosworth, Plantagenet kings Edward IV and Richard III had operated within a system of limited monarchy, and had governed through the regular use of parliament, she says.