Rebecca Franks: What drew you to the mystery of the missing princes?
Philippa Langley: The inspiration for the Missing Princes Project was the Looking For Richard Project, a research operation gathering and examining information about Richard III’s death and burial. The catalyst happened during the week of the reburial of Richard III in 2015. The headline of a full-page article in the Daily Mail said – I’m paraphrasing – something along the lines of “it’s mad to make this child killer a national hero”. The article then cited the traditional narrative around that story – that after King Edward IV died on 3 April 1483 (not 9 April, as was previously believed), his sons Edward and Richard were taken to the Tower of London, and said to have been murdered there on the orders of Richard III. But there was no evidence in it. I thought: okay, maybe that take is right – but you have to go in with an evidence-based analysis and methodology. By the time I was on the train leaving Leicester after the reburial, I was putting together this new evidence-based research project.
Some sceptics might say that, in light of your work on Richard III, it would be hard for you to be an impartial investigator. Was that a question you had to confront?
One hundred per cent. It was something I had to come to terms with in my own mind, because the story of Richard murdering the two princes is so incredibly powerful. It’s enmeshed in our psyche, thanks to Shakespeare’s play and Sir Thomas More’s literary narrative. I had to say to myself that it’s about finding – it was very clear that the debate was still ongoing. In order to lay Richard III to rest, we had to see if we could answer this question either way.
