Welcome to the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service.

Today I am taking you back to 2012 when a group of archaeologists famously found the

Lost Grave of an English King.

In 2020, Alex Lost spoke to the academic who led the historic dig.

In 2012, Dr Richard Buckley led an archaeological dig to find the long-lost remains of one of

England's most vilified kings, Richard III.

Immortalized by Shakespeare, Richard III was briefly the king of England some 500 years

ago at the end of a period of turmoil known as the Wars of the Roses.

For centuries he was portrayed as having a twisted or hunched back with a limp and a

withered arm, a man who upon the death of his brother the king, connived to seize the

throne for himself and had the rightful heirs, his young nephews murdered in the Tower

of London.

All this of course might not actually be true because history is often written by the

victors and Richard did not last long.

He was killed at Bosworth in central England in 1485, leading his army in battle against

Henry Tudor, a rival claimant to the throne.

Richard III, the last of the Plantagenet dynasty, the last English monarch slain in battle.

His body was paraded, naked, through the streets.

Then it all gets a bit sketchy.

Well, according to accounts his naked corpse was buried in a hastily dug grave inside

a church which lay within the friary of the Grey Friars in Leicester.

The site though was demolished centuries ago, but historians and enthusiasts of the

...