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23 October 2015 / Nicholas Dobson
Issue: 7673 / Categories: Features , Public
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My kingdom for a consultation?

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Nicholas Dobson digs up the reinterment of Richard III

Shakespeare’s Richard III is dark, duplicitous and dangerous. For instance (among many villainies) he arranges the murder of his nephews aka “those bastards in the Tower” who are “Foes to my rest, and my sweet sleep’s disturbers”. But the Richard III Society (the society) believes that “many features of the traditional accounts of the character and career of Richard III are neither supported by sufficient evidence nor reasonably tenable”. And “wonderful play” though it is, Richard III is “not history” and “does not represent fact”.

Whatever the reality, Richard has given public lawyers great posthumous service by clarifying the nature and scope of some key areas of public law. This followed the discovery in 2012 of his mortal remains beneath a Leicester City Council car park. For in R (Plantagenet Alliance) v. Secretary of State for Justice and others [2014] EWHC 1662 (Admin), [2015] 3 All ER 261, the Divisional Court (Hallett LJ VP and Ouseley and Haddon Cave JJ) rejected various challenge grounds

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