Bosworth Located - Does It Matter?
Today the BBC News revealed that the true site of the Battle of Bosworth, 1485, has been discovered and apparently it is about a mile to the south of where it was previously thought to be. But does this really matter? By which I mean of course it matters in a factual, pin-down-the-location sort of way, but in a less tangible sense does it really matter? I visited Bosworth Field many years ago when I lived in Leicestershire. Except, of course, I didn't, because I was visiting a site that was a mile away from the correct one. Yet for me the experience of being at "Bosworth," the site where one of my heroes, Richard III, had been killed was one of the most powerful emotional and imaginative engagements with history that I had ever had. How many of us have visited battlefields and visualised what must have happened there in all its horror and heroism? How many of us have felt the atmosphere of a site like Bosworth make an unforgettable impression on us? I remember going to...