Suppose Richard III won at Bosworth…

Suppose six hundred years later his legacy still shapes English society…

Author, Angela K. Smith, will talk about and read from her new novel, The Solace of the Common People, an alternative history, which imagines the world as it might have been if Richard III had defeated Henry Tudor. This Richard sets about building a new kind of regime with the welfare of the common people at its heart. It is a world without the Tudors, without the Reformation, without further civil war. But he is beset by an illicit passion, haunted by the ghosts of his past, and faced with betrayal and rebellion that will shake the foundations of his rule. The novel explores the legacy of this reign through the eyes of a young man in the year 2125, as the nation prepares for the coronation of a new King Richard.

Angela, a university professor, will talk about her long-held fascination with Shakespeare’s ‘poisonous bunchback’d toad’ and why she wanted to reinvent him, touching upon a range of different representations of Richard III, from the Tudors to the recent hit film The Lost King, asking the audience to imagine ‘what if’ history was different.

VENUE: WORKSHOP, EXETER PHOENIX

This event is an external hire

*Subject to a £1.50 ticketing system charge. We don’t charge this to make a profit. Find out more >>