Battle of Bosworth Field of visible combat. Despite the dramatic licences taken, Shakespeare's version of the Battle of Bosworth was the model of the event for English textbooks for many years during the 18th and 19th centuries. This glamorised version of history, promulgated in books and paintings and played out on stages across the country, perturbed humorist Gilbert Abbott à Beckett. He voiced his criticism in the form of a poem, equating the romantic view of the battle to watching a "fifth-rate production of "Richard III"": shabbily costumed actors fight the Battle of Bosworth on-stage while those with lesser roles lounge at the back,
Ricardian (Richard III) was originally a small group of interested amateur historians whose aim was to bring about a re-assessment of the reputation of Richard III. The society became moribund during the Second World War. In 1951 Josephine Tey published her detective novel "The Daughter of Time", in which Richard’s guilt is examined and doubted. In 1955, Laurence Olivier released his film of Shakespeare's "Richard III", which at the beginning admitted that the play was based on legend, and a sympathetic, detailed biography of Richard was published by Paul Murray Kendall, all of which went some way towards re-invigorating the society. The Fellowship