When Richard rose again

Ten years ago a skeleton in a Leicester car park transformed our understanding of a medieval king, and turned him into a media sensation. Mike Pitts tells the remarkable story of the discovery of Richard III's remains

-  Mike Pitts

Ten years ago – from 4 to 6 September 2012, to be precise – an unmarked grave was excavated beneath a car park in Leicester. All that survived of the person interred there was a skeleton.

It might well have belonged to an anonymous medieval friar. After all, it was known that a friary had stood in the area before the Dissolution. Yet the bones bore a number of distinctive features that matched disputed historical details, encouraging researchers to explore another, tantalising possibility: could the remains be those of a more noteworthy and controversial historical figure? Months of in- tensive scientific study followed, and the world became focused on this unusual excavation.

Then, in February 2013, archaeologist Richard Buckley – leader of the University of Leicester’s Grey Friars Project, which aimed to uncover that lost medieval friary – rose from his seat among a panel of historians and scientists, and addressed the overflowing press conference. “It is the academic conclusion of the University of Leicester,” he announced, “that, beyond reasonable doubt, the individual exhumed at Greyfriars in September 2012 is indeed Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England.”

This extraordinary excavation was the culmination of years of effort, and an unlikely dream come true – one that began in a bookshop 15 years earlier.