(… or fostered by wrong-headed romantics?)
On the plus side, Josephine Tey’s 1951 novel is an engaging detective story which appeals to the reader’s sense of fairness, seeking truth in place of unfounded allegation and exposing the way in which history can be and is written by the victors, especially after a change of regime. It also made scathing criticisms of the unthinking myth-mongering prevalent in what is now the heritage industry and in primary-school textbooks, too often endorsed without examination in more serious works.
Where it goes seriously haywire is not so much about Richard III as in the matter of “Tonypandy”.(pp.109-110 and onwards recurrently to the end of the book). This resonant Welsh place-name – later sneered at as “silly”- is hijacked to characterise the sort of myths referred to above (p.127: ‘Pure Tonypandy. A dramatic story with not a word of truth in it.’) Tey’s supposed justification for doing so actually embodies many of the faults she picks up in the sources for what we may call Shakespeare’s Richard*:
· a distorted account imputed to the tradition she is attacking – “the shooting down by troops that Wales
· reliance on hearsay (40 years after the event), use of selective or no evidence, tabloid-style slander unsubstantiated.
· victors’ version of events uncritically accepted. Tonypandy was not an isolated outbreak of lawlessness; the miners were forced back after a protracted struggle with numerous clashes.
Of course Tey had no sympathy for striking miners or for the lower orders generally. Similar instances of blatant bias, dogmatically asserted as undeniable truth, and the familiar buzzing of favourite bees in her bonnet (like the fixation on physiognomy with which her detective’s quest begins), occur throughout as in her other works.
Why bother about all this? Because historical accuracy matters, and those who denounce official versions should be more scrupulous, not less (or no better), in our own practices than purveyors of the established orthodoxy.
You don’t have to be a wrong-headed romantic to think there is a good case made out in the book for rejecting the once-traditional, Tudor-led assessment of Richard III, but it may help, especially if you buy the whole package of Tey’s portrayal of him. Being a mid-20th century-style family man and general good guy would have been somewhat at variance with his military side as well as his position of power. But it would be seriously wrong-headed and worse than romantic to take her unsupported word for any of the other instances of what she so wrong-headedly calls Tonypandy, first and foremost that significant episode of British labour history and class struggle itself.
On p.221 Inspector Grant realises, no doubt speaking for his author as usual, that “History was something that he would never understand…” Evidently – as long as the experience of the vast majority of humanity is discounted as of no interest.
Page refs. as in: Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time. London
Tangentially related SmothPubs pamphlet: What is Libertarian History? by Liz Willis (2011) 12pp.
Even more tangentially related article: E. Willis, ‘English detective fiction and the “People’s War”’. Forum for Modern Language Studies, vol.42, no.1, 2006: 13-21.
* The enduring fascination of Shakespeare’s Richard – as crime-fiction noir not history; as memorably portrayed by Paul Daneman in the BBC’s 1962 Age of Kings series, not pantomime villain – is another discussion.
Remembering 1911 - see also Tonypandy riots article on wikipedia.
Medicine, War - and Murder: Health Professionals in English Detective Fiction of the Second World War. Another sidelight on detective fiction, otherwise unpublished Word document here
(It may be worth noting here that in editions of the
collected works, Shakespeare’s
play is called “The Tragedy” , not “The History” of King Richard III).
Remembering 1911 - see also Tonypandy riots article on wikipedia.
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| Reality Check: A Place in History, by Colin Philpott (Ammonite Press 2012) |
New suggestion for further reading:
Josephine Wilkinson, The Princes in the Tower: Did Richard III murder
his nephews...? Stroud, Amberley, 2013.
A sequence of essays presenting a scrupulous and
thorough consideration of the evidence now available in relation to different
aspects of and suspects in the case. Delivers several “not guilty” verdicts but
arrives at no final conclusion, although sign-posting a direction in which one
may be sought. And more, or More (as in Sir Thomas, on whom Tey expended so
much scorn, and who first supplied many of the key details in the traditional
tale): in effect endorses a crime-fiction categorisation of the Shakespearean script
by demonstrating how More’s patently inaccurate narrative was shaped by
dramatic moralising rather than historical imperatives.
To treat Thomas More’s History of King Richard III as a work of history,
then, is to do it a disservice and to overlook More’s point entirely. (p.127)
[... It] has no place or purpose as source material
for historical enquiry. (p.128)
Given that More’s History
of King Richard III should be viewed as
drama rather than as history, it is perhaps only fitting that the darkest and
most memorable portrayal of Richard III should be found in the work of the
greatest dramatist of the all, William Shakespeare, whose play Richard III clearly owes much to Thomas More.
(Note 54, p.176).
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| Paul Daneman as Richard in BBC's An Age of Kings, 1962 |
